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Reprinted from Watson’s Magazine 


Atlanta, Georgia 


1909 


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ft 


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mths 


FOREIGN MISSIONS 


CHAPTER I. 


N DICKENS’ “Bleak House”, the great-hearted author, who laid 
his hands tenderly upon so hana chords of public opinion in the 
effort to guide humanity into higher and better paths, drew a lu- 

dicrous picture, true to life then and true to it now, of the missionary 
enthusiast who allowed her own household to become a tragedy of dis- 
order and her children to grow up in scandalous neglect, while her 
thoughts were fixed upon the natives of the Borrioboola-Gha. 

It was not until a few years ago that we had any definite idea of 
the modus operandi of the Christian workers in heathen lands. We 
honestly believed that the simple and heroic standards of the pioneer 
missionaries still prevailed. Whenever the Sunday came round for the 
regular sermon on Foreign Missions, we went along with the others, 
and listened with sympathetic admiration to the recital of missionary 
sacrifices, struggles, perils, and triumphs. When the preacher men- 
tioned the martyrs who had given their lives to the cause, we were 
deeply moved; and when the plea for the benighted heathen was made, 
we did our share in putting up the money to send the Gospel message to 
our distant brothers in yellow, brown, black and red. But in course of 
time, we began to hear of things which seriously disturbed our reflec- 
tions. Ministers, returning from foreign fields, would drop words -in 
private conversation that did not harmonize with the Missionary Ser- 
mon. Now and then we came upon a statement in some book that 
shook us up considerably. Gradually, we formed our own conception 
of what was going on abroad, and we began to write about it. Then, 
a friend, who is on the other side of the question and who desired to 
convince us of the error of our conclusions, brought us a stack of books, 
pamphlets, tracts and denominational papers to prove that we were 
wrong. Carefully and patiently, this literature in favor of Foreign 
Missions was studied,—with results which will be manifest to those 
who read this pamphlet. 

We hope that our position will not be misunderstood nor misrepre- 
sented. We heartily favor Foreign Missions. But we contend that the 
present system of doing the work is unscriptural, unwise, unpatriotic 
and unnatural. 

If Jesus Christ had meant to command us to carry free school books 
and free tuition to the heathen, while our own children are steeped in 
poverty and ignorance, He would doubtless have said so. If our Sa- 
vior had meant that we must go into all the world and carry victuals 
and clothes to foreigners, when our own people have not enough to eat 
and wear, He would, in all probability, have told us so. We prefer to 
believe that when He said GO and PREACH, He meant just that. He 
didn’t say, “Leave your own sons and daughters unconverted, unedu- 
cated, bound jn child-slavery, perishing in the crowded dens of vice- 


[4] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


reeking tenements, growing up in squalid stupidity in the backward 
regions of your own land,—leave these, your own flesh and blood, and 
hurry abroad to all the heathen nations, and to some of the Christian 
nations, carrying victuals and clothes, medicines and_ books, doctors 
and pedagogues, and give to the heathen what you deny to your own.” 

~ Let us at the start, rid our minds of the hereditary idea of mission- 
ary heroism and martyrdom. All that belonged to the early days, 
several generations ago. Too much praise can not be given to the fear- 
less pioneers who first planted the cross among the nations which we 
class as pagan. Theirs were lives of danger, of hardships, of noble 
self-sacrifice. That was a long time ago. The going of the European 
merchant into heathen lands made more easy the work of the Euro- 
pean Missionary. Innate hatred of strangers and inborn reverence for 
their own religion ceased to be strong enough to continually feed the 
furies of persecution. In our own time, the hardships and the perils 
of the foreign missionary admit of no comparison with those of the 
soldier ordered to the Philippine Islands. Our foreign consuls have 
no better jobs than our foreign missionaries, whose toil is no longer ar- 
duous and whose salary is not only good but regular. To teach and 
preach abroad is about the same now as teaching and preaching here. 
To run the hospital and boss the commissary is no more fatiguing in 
South America and the Orient than it is in Europe and America. 
Dearly beloved! Don’t weep any more over the hard life of the for- 
eign missionary. The chances are that he is having a much better time 
than yourself. He wears up-to-date habiliments, lives on appetizing 
viands, has comfortable and roomy quarters, smokes good cigars when 
he feels like it, and has a corking time generally. 

Danger? Why, beloved, your own wife and daughter are always 
in greater danger than the wife and daughter of the foreign mission- 
ary ever are. You dare not leave your womenfolk alone in your own 
home; you dare not allow them to travel alone along the public high- 
way. Your child is not safe on her way to school. No white woman 
is safe in any by-street of our cities. The fear of the negro shadows 
the entire Republic. 

Then read this little paragraph clipped almost at random from the 
Times-Courier, & newspaper published in Lincoln, [linois, as to the 
frightful danger in which our sisters in the Northern States find them- 
selves in this enlightened century 


“In the New England States the men don’t respect women the same as they do 
in the Southern States. A fine-looking woman here has lots to contend with; all 
sorts of tricks are done to get the best of them. Girls disappear here and there is not 
much said about it; some are found dead and no clew who did the deed. You ean 
hardly read a paper without an article of some girl missing or murdered or drowned. 
The young men and boys need looking after; they are led astray just as much as the 
young girls. Parents want to watch their boys and find amusement for them. I 
can’t see where people are any better off here than the negro slaves were. That is, 
I mean the poor people that work in the cotton mills and woolen mills, too, and shoe 
factories; the wages are not enough to keep the family decent and the consequence 
is, the mother goes to the mill—and the children, as soon as they can dodge the school 
age.” 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [5] 


Girls are kidnapped and sold into a slavery that is worse than death. 
Women are seized, on the street, hurried away to some cellar or dark 
room, and outraged. There is not a heathen land on this globe where 
a man or a woman is not safer than in Christian America. 

You will, perhaps, hear some one dispute this, and the Boxer re- 
bellion in China may be cited. That will be the only episode upon 
which he can base a denial, and even that will not serve, for the Christ- 
tans provoked that uprising. 

The Catholics had forced the Chinese government to concede priv- 
ileges which set up a state within a state—a fact explained in another 
portion of this pamphlet. Then, again, the Christian nations were slicing 
off big hunks of Chinese territory. Russia took some, Germany took 
some, Great Britain took some, and so on. Then again, the Christians 
were demanding larger trade privileges and were proceeding to gobble 
up public utilities, after the fashion of private capitalists in this coun- 
try. In short, the foreigners were crowding the monkey, and the na- 
tives flamed out in rebellion against the encroachments. The special 
ferocity with which the Boxers attacked the Catholics proves what the 
natives thought of the source of the trouble. And the huge indemnity 
which China had to pay the Roman church will rankle in the minds of 
the celestials for generations. 


te te ste se te te he 
aS * cS a k * a 3 


Come! throw aside your preconceived notions and your indiffer- 
ence, and think of the matter as an original proposition. 

What does the Bible command us Chr istians todo? JESUS issued 
the order, not Bishop Bashford, nor any other prince of the Church. 
What is the exact meaning of the divine instruction ? 

Go among the heathen and preach to them. Deliver Christ’s mes- 
sage. Explain the plan of salvation. Let every nation hear the Word 
of God. Jesus has come to save the world,—go ye, and proclaim the 
glad tidings! 

That is the command, clear and positive; and the marching orders 

are equally simple and plain. 
' This, in substance, was the divine injunction. One of the strongest 
appeals which the Fathers of the Church made to the ancient peoples 
was based on the contrast between the consecrated poverty of the 
Christian missionaries and the riches of pagan priesthoods. 

Origen cried out to the Egyptians, “Forsake the priests of Pharaoh, 
who have earthly possessions, and come unto us who have none. WE 
(CHRISTIANS) MUST BE CONTENT WITH SIMPLE FOOD 
AND APPAREL.” 

So late as the fourth century after Christ, the great Council of An- 
tioch declared that the ministers of the Gospel must “have food and 
raiment and therewith to be content”. 

How far is the cry from this standard of primitive purity to the 
standards which now prevail! Then the motto was, “Let us lve as 
Christ lived: let us beware of wealth and the covetous spirit: let us win 
a lost world from these luxurious priests of paganism by offering the 


[6] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


sharpest contrast to them—our unselfish devotion, our purity and poy- 
erty and humility and consecrated zeal, winning the hearts of the peo- 
ple away from the pomps and sensualities of heathen ceremonial.” 

Alas! Papa Pius at Rome now hands over a comfortable surplus of 
four million dollars to the Rothschilds to be loaned at usury, and thus 
this vicar of Christ uses the Jews to skin the Christians ! 

No earthly king has a palace so large and gorgeously splendid as 
the Vatican, wherein the haughty Italian princes of the church stand 
around the papal throne, appareled with a richness surpassing by far 
the luxury which Origen denounced. 

And when the Protestant missionaries to China filed their claims 
for damages, on account of property destroyed in the Boxer riots, the 
amount of diamonds and other jewelry listed caused sarcastic comment 
in the United States Senate. 

One member of the Committee on Foreign Relations remarked that 
“the wardrobes of the missionaries must have far excelled those of the 
most extravagant actress on the stage today. Taking their claims at 
their face values, the diamonds alone must have been worth as much as 
the entire stock of the largest diamond dealer in New York City”. 

We do not endorse the above statement, for it is a self-evident exag- 
geration; but there can be no doubt of the fact that the richness of the 
wardrobes and the abundance of jewels, listed in the claims for dam- 
ages, did cause much critical and ironical remark. The Mission Board 
felt the force of these sarcasms, and deputized two of the brethren to 
confute them. We have read the paper which the brethren accordingly 
prepared, and we consider it a very weak document. In the first place, 
it does not give due weight to the words “at their face value”, and, in 
the second “place, it relies entirely upon averages and generalities 
There is no specific denial whatever about the diamonds. Evidently, 
then, the wives of the missionaries to China did file claims for rich 

wardrobes and for much jewelry. 

Very far, indeed, are such luxuries from the missionary standards 


of Judson and Morrison and Crawford, and thousands of others who 


pioneered the Christian work in heathen lands. 


*k %* % oo oo %* * % * 


In a discussion of a subject like this, a few details are of greater 
value than volumes of glossy generalities. The gist of our contention 
is that our own ignorant, unconverted and destitute people, should be 
the first objects of our benevolence, and that we have no moral right to 
furnish food, clothing, medicine, education and employment, to the 
heathen of foreign lands, while millions of our. own flesh and blood are 
left in squalor, in ignorance, and in a spiritually lost condition. 
The book called “Fifty Years in China”, by Rev. L. S. Foster, is a 
history of the lifework of that noble and oifted missionary, Rev. T. P. 
Crawford, one of the consecrated souls of whose record the Baptist de- 


nomination is justly proud. Glancing through the volume, we find 
this item: 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [7] 


“There were already two day schools for boys and one boarding school for girls, 
superintended by the ladies of this mission. The Crawfords did not desire the for- 
mer, because the Chinese are accustomed to educate their sons, nor the latter, be- 
cause it involved too much expenditure of time and money. In mission boarding 
schools the girls, as their education is not valued, HAD TO BE FURNISHED WITH 
FOOD, CLOTHING AND MUCH ELSE, to induce the poor people to send their 
daughters. Without such inducements it had not been found possible to secure them. 
But they heard of one lady who had procured day pupils by giving each girl THN 
RIN, CASH, or two-thirds of a cent per day, ostensibly to buy lunch. THIS BRI- 
BERY (as it certainly was, though they did not then realize it) SEEMED LESS 
OBJECTIONABLE THAN GIVING A FULL SUPPORT.” 


You will observe that the Chinese children were given free board 
and tuition, free clothing, free schoolbooks, AVD MUCH ELSE! 

Does anybody believe that the poor children of backward regions 
of our own land would have to be hired to come to school and get a free 
education? Are not the minds and bodies and souls of the little waifs 
of our own land as precious in the sight of God as are the heathen boys 
and girls? 

Again we quote from “Fifty Years in China”: 

“Some years previous to this they had observed a growing belief among the na- 
tive Christians that the education and permanent employment of their children was 
the legitimate obligation of the Board and the missionaries. To correct this, Mrs. 
Crawford began to require'a fee of three dollars per annum from each of the pupils 
for defraying his expenses. From the first they had been required to furnish their 
own clothing, which was a decided advance upon any boarding school yet in China. 
BUT THEY WERE STILL SUPPLIED WITH TEACHER, SCHOOL-ROOM, 
BOOKS, STATIONERY AND FOOD FROM THE MISSION TREASURY. When 
the fee of three dollars was asked considerable dissatisfaction manifested itself, and 
a few dropped out of school. The most of them, however, continued, believing that 
at the end of the course they would be given good employment. This was the rule in 
the Presbyterian College near them, which was their model.” 


Think of this, will you? 

Mrs. Crawford adopted a new rule, requiring three dollars per 
year, to pay for food, clothing, fuel, books, teacher and school-room! 
And because the pupils had to pay about one cent per day for all that, 
some of them quit, and the others held on because of the permanent 
jobs promised them at the end of the educational course! 

Would not thousands of mountain boys and girls thank their heav- 
enly Father for such a chance as that? 

Suppose the same system had been applied to our own country at 
the time when the missionaries adopted it in China,—what might have - 
been the inspiring result ? 


* * cS #8 * % * * 


What is the modus operandi of the Foreign Missions? ow do 
they set about converting the heathen ? 

Three agencies, co-operating, are relied on,—the church proper, the 
school, and the dispensary. To this last, the commissary department, 
it is customary to attach the missionary physician. 

Very few of the churches, after a hundred years of trial, are self- 
supporting. China is regarded as the finest field of achievement in 


[3] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


missionary work, and yet out of the twenty-seven churches, only four 
sustain themselves. 

As to the schools, ranging from kindergarten to finishing college, 
we understand that none of them are self-supporting. In this, we may 
possibly be in error, but we certainly get the impression that, as a rule, 
the education of the heathen is given without cost to them. Free books, 
free tuition, free board, and, in many cases, free clothing must be of- 
fered as an inducement to attendance upon the Christian schools. 

The commissary, which is called dispensary in all the missionary 
books and tracts, is just what its name would imply. It distributes, 
gratuitously, the necessaries of life among the heathen. 

The “missionary doctor” is a physician who goes about among the 
people of the mission fields and gives them his professional services, 
medicine included, free of charge. 

“The Uplift of China” is the title of a volume whose author is Rev. 
Arthur H. Smith, “thirty-five years a missionary in China”. 

With a candor which is refreshing, Brother Smith explains how the 
physical necessities of the poorer heathen are made the basis of mis- 
sionary effort. See page 175, where he tells us that d SEASON OF 
FAMINE furnishes a wonderful opening to the Christian workers in 
China. He mentions the great famine of 1877-78 as a pentecostal time 
for the Church. Very naively, Brother Smith says, “/amine relief 
proves a golden key to unlock many closed doors.” Wow many doors, 
in our own land, might not the Mohammedan or Buddhist missionary 
unlock with a similar “golden key”? 

Then he speaks of asylums for lepers which the missionaries estab- 
lish and support, and also asylums and schools for orphans and for the 
blind and for deaf-mutes, as well as for the insane. 

On page 162 is this paragraph: 


“A well-equipped mission station will have a dispensary and a hospital, THE 
RESORT OF THOUSANDS FROM NEAR AND FROM FAR.” 


To get medicine and medical attention, thousands of poor China- 
men flock to the free hospital, are given treatment, are taught the plan 
of salvation and are urged to join the church, 

How many “converts” might not the Buddhists make, if they put 
in practice, in the United States, tactics like those employed by our 
missionaries abroad ? 

Think of it! The Christians send more than twenty-one million 
dollars to foreign countries every year, to maintain asylums, orphan- 
ages, hospitals, commissaries, traveling doctors, an elaborate system of 
free education, and a system of industrial training. 

From what verse in the Bible do we get the command to do this? 
What word of Jesus Christ can be twisted into such a meaning? 

If we had no starvelings crouching at our own gates, if we had no 
illiteracy blotting our national map with huge black splotches, if we 
had no domains of spiritual darkness in which the religion of Christ is 
an undelivered message, then, THEN, we would do well to succor the 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [9] 


heathen out of our superabundance. But until we shall have taken 
bodily and spiritual care of our own household, we have no moral right 
to tax our people to feed, clothe and educate the heathen. To preach 
the Gospel to them meets every requirement of duty. 

e *k ok aK * * aK * * 

China, as already stated, is the field to which the parson who is put 
up to preach the missionary sermon always “points with pride”. It is 
there that is found the most reassuring harvest of results. In studying 
the subject of Foreign Missions, we were especially interested in the re- 
ports on China. 

And what is the situation in that huge empire? After a century of 
effort and the expenditure of stupendous sums of money, what is the 
net result ? 

China is a country which contains some 400,000,000 souls, and yet 
there are only 6,388 working Protestants among them, counting both 
sexes. There are but 200,000 names on the church books! 

What a small drop im that vast bucket! 

We are decidedly of the opinion that a Buddhist missionary, com- 
ing to New York with a fund of $21,000,000 to spend, every year, and 
offering to supply the poor with every necessary of life and a first-class 
education besides, could enroll a hundred thousand “converts” in less 
than ninety days. 

In Rev. A. H. Smith’s book, after saying every good word that he 
could for the progress of Christian evangelical work in China, he 
makes this notable admission : 


“The masses in China are as yet unaffected by Christianity.” 


What? After a century of labor and half a century of free schools, 
free asylums and hospitals, the masses of China are as yet unaffected ? 
Terrible admission. (Page 199.) . 

Another disheartening fact is mentioned by Rev. Mr. Smith: “Dur- 
ing the current year (1906) practical war existed between Roman 
Catholics and Protestant Christians.” This state of affairs scandalizes 
the “heathen Chinee”, He can not understand why sects who worship 
the same Jesus should hate each other rabidly. So bitter became the 
mutual animosity of the Catholic and Protestant that heathen Chinese 
soldiers had to be sent to the affected district to preserve order among 
the Christians! 

Could any statement be more damaging ? 

In 1898, the Catholics put a pressure on the Chinese government 
(through the French legation) and extorted a concession which will 
forever be a bone of contention and a cause of bad blood. The priests 
were given civil as well as ecclesiastical jurisdiction over their con- 
verts: Catholic bishops were raised to the rank of Chinese viceroys, and 
the lower clergy to the dignity of Chinese mandarins. Thus the mis- 
sionaries have set up a government within a government, a foreign em- 
pire within the Chinese empire. 


[10] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


What nation would suffer such a thing if she had her own way ? 
Are we not bound to know that this thorn rankles in the flesh, and that 
China will come to hate all Christians, if the Catholic Church persists 
in her encroaching policy? The Roman hierarchy is absorbing prop- 
erty in China just as it did in the Philippines, and as it does wherever 
it becomes a fixture. Therefore, it is practically certain that, sooner or 
later, the national spirit of China will thrust out the foreign inter- 
meddler and become Christianized, if at all, under the evangelical work 
of Chinese Christians. 

2 * * % % ak * * bs 

A refrain which runs through all these missionary books, tracts and 
pamphlets is “we need more money”. The language may vary, but the 
meaning never. The unanimity with which everybody engaged in the 
foreign missions speaks upon this point is pleasing. Harmony could 
not be more sweetly attuned. ; 

In one of the pamphlets the demand for “more money” displays it- 
self in maps. On one of these is pictured the shortcomings of our 
Methodist brethren in the matter of tithes. The showing is startling. 
According to this map, the members of that denomination were heavily 
in arrears in 1900. They owed God tithes to the amount of $29,000,000 
and paid only $5,000,000. This particular map is in the form of a cir- 
cle; a space is marked off, in white, to show the relative size of the 
$5,000,000 to the larger sum which remained unpaid. The balance of 
the circle, and much the larger part, is red-inked, and these accusing 
words appear: 


“Balance due God on the $29,000,000.” 


The cool assumption that the members of the Methodist church owe 
a tithe to God, and that the churches alone are authorized to collect the 
debt, would be ludicrous had it not been lifted into the realms of the 
serious by many a sermon and tract. 

The writer of this was attending divine services at White Oak 
Camp Ground (in Georgia) some years ago, and heard an eminent 
Methodist presiding-elder tell the congregation why the farmers were 
having such short crops that year. The good parson said that the crop 
failure was a punishment sent upon the people by the Lord because 
they had not paid tithes to God. Why the farmers should have been 
singled out by Jehovah for pains and penalties was not explained. But 
Bishop J. W. Bashford is on the same line. In his book, “God’s Mis- 
sionary Plan for the World”, occurs a chapter on 7ithes; and in that 
chapter of his book Bishop Bashford is surely a mighty good Jew, so 
far as church finance goes. Bishop Bashford makes the statement that 
there are stronger arguments in favor of doing away with the Sabbath 
Day than can be urged for the abolition of tithing! 

Then the Bishop harks back to Leviticus and lays down the law to 
us. Heavens above! /s the law of Leviticus our law? Tf it is, why 
take only one part of it? If any of it binds us, how do we rightfully 
escape the rest of it? 


FOREIGN MISSIONS r11] 


Bishop Bashford cites passages from Leviticus to clinch his argu- 
ment. Very well: if Leviticus is good law, binding upon us Gentiles, 
then we must look about us, and get our general bearings. 

Leviticus is strict with men who wear beards, definitely forbidding 
the rounding of the corners of said hirsute appendages. Giving to this 
Levitical law a liberal construction, we would say that it meant to pro- 
hibit a man from monkeying with his beard at all. He must let it grow 
as God pleases. To round off the corners, or to block out a naked chin, 
leaving the cheeks parded, or to resort to other vain and fanciful ef- 
forts to coax comeliness, are clearly against the law. It must be 
stopped. 

Again, the higher clergy must quit marrying widows. The Levit- 
ical Code is emphatic on that point. Alas! for ambitious widows. 

Again, the farmers must not cut all the grain off the corners of the 
wheat field, and must not glean after the harvest. It is against the law. 
The corners and the grain on the ground must be left there for the 
poor and the stranger. 

Again, we must not cross-breed our cattle, nor sow any mixed grain, 
nor wear clothes of mixed fibre. It is against the Code Leviticus. The 
mule industry must discontinue. 

Again, we must resort to the law of retaliation to get redress for all 
grievances. _An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth: if a man knocks 
your teeth down your throat, the sheriff must knock his teeth down his 
throat, and thus the law be satisfied. 

If we must adhere to the law of Leviticus, we shall demand physi- 
eal perfection of our clergymen. No man with a cast in his eye, none 
who is lame of foot or arm or leg, none who has a flat nose, none who 
has lost or maimed a single part of his physical equipment, can be re- 
tained in the ministry. No more blind SE no more one-armed 
preachers, no more hump-backed preachers ! 

Besides, Leviticus expressly forbids the shaving of the head, and 
every tonsured monk would have to get out. 

If Leviticus is good law, we must quit eating lobsters, crabs, eels, 
and oysters. This would play havoe with the fish trade, and cause a 
riot among the gourmands. 

Moreover, if the law of Leviticus is binding upon us in the matter 
of tithes, it must also be obeyed in the matter of the Sabbath Year and 
the Jubilee. We must let all the farming land lie fallow every seventh 
year; and we must, every fiftieth year, iaicel debts, liberate prisoners, 
restore land to all who have been forced by poverty to sell it during 
the preceding forty-nine years. The year of Jubilee had a profound 
economic meaning, its purpose being to prevent the concentration of 
wealth and the creation of a pauper class. 

We want to be fair with Bishop Bashford, and we therefore make 
him a proposition: . 

If his mighty denomination will help us bring about some system 
to prevent the centralizing of power and privilege and riches, we will 
help him get a tenth of the annual increase. Jf the Church will give 


[12] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


us the Jubilee, we will give the Church the tithe. You know, Bishop, 
that the tail should go with the hide. 


In 1788, Henry Grattan, the great Irish orator and statesman, de- 
livered, in Parliament, an exhaustive speech on tithes. In this ad- 
dress, Mr. Grattan challenges and disproves the divine right of the 
clergy to a tenth. He points out that the priesthood of the Jews did 
not enjoy a tithe. The Levites had a tenth because they had no other 
inheritance; but Aaron and his sons had but the tenth of that tenth. 
The tithes which were paid by the Jews supported the Levites, the 
priesthood, the poor of the country, the stranger within the gates, the 
widow, the orphan and the temple. 

But how can a Christian priesthood claim under the Jews ? Did not 
the old dispensation pass away? Did not the tithe system belong to the 
religion which Christ came to supplant? Can we hold on to the finan- 
cial part of it and reject the remainder ? ; 

Christ was not a Levite, nor of the Jewish priesthood: how is it, 
then, that we inherit that one feature of the Jewish religious system, 
tithes ? 

In one of Alexander Del Mar’s great books, “The Middle Ages”, we 
find some curious details relating to the historic origin of voluntary 
donations to temples and priesthoods. The Greeks devoted a tenth of 
the spoils of war to the temple of Mars. The Gaditan chaplains ex- 
acted tithes for Hercules. Herodotus records the fact that the Siph- 
nians gave a tenth of the produce of their gold mines to Apollo. The 
Brahmin, the Buddhist, Assyrian and Egyptian priesthoods all ex- 
acted tithes from the people to support their religious worship. From 
the Assyrians and the Egyptians the Hebrews borrowed the system, 
and now Bishop Bashford wants to borrow it from the Hebrews. 

Before the time of Christ, the Romans had adopted tithes in sup- 
port of their paganism and the Catholics appropriated this feature of 
paganism as they did so many others. 

* oS * *K ok * cS a ok 


Upon what theory are American church-members burdened with 
the expense of Missionary work in countries that are already Christ- 
lanized ¢ 

Take Italy, for example. What scriptural authority have we for 
spending our money on mission work in a land where the message of 
Chi'st has been heard for nearly nineteen hundred years, and where 
the t‘hristian religion has had absolute sway for centuries? 

A ve the Italians heathen ? 

Is the Christianity of Papa Pius and his cardinals a mere pagan- 
ism? Is the adoration of the Virgin and the prostrations before im- 
ages of saints a modernized idolatry? Are the miracle-workings of the 
Catholic priests a persistent survival of the trickeries of the ancient 
temples? 

Tt must be that our Protestant churches hold that these questions 
are to be answered affirmatively, else they would not put Italy in the 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [13] 


same category with China and Korea. All Italy is Catholic, and the 
Protestant churches of America are trying to convert Italians from 
Catholicism, just as they are trying to convert the Chinese from idol- 
worship. In other words, one sect. of the followers of Christ is deal- 
ing with another sect as though they were heathen. 

What text in the Bible authorizes that? 

The Cubans have long been Catholics, yet we are spending much 
money there to convert these Christians to another form of Christian- 
ity. The same is true of South America. 

In these Catholic countries, our Protestant churches are running 
the commissary, the hospital, the circuit-riding doctor, and the free 
school, just the same as though South America had not been a Christ- 
ian territory for generations. 

With heroic toil and at great expenditure of life and treasure, Cath- 
olic missionaries planted the Christian religion in Mexico, in Central 
America, in South America, and in the West Indies. For many and 
many a decade, these have been Christian lands,—domains over which 
the Cross reigned supreme. Yet, at this time, we find the Protestant 
world treating these Catholic countries as they treat India, Korea, Bur- 
mah, China and Japan. Catholic South America is put on the same 
footing as a heathen land, and is regarded as a fit object of foreign 
missions. 

This fact suggests the question: “Jf Roman Catholicism is tanta- 
mount to paganism, why not combat tt in North America?” 

In the United States, Roman Catholicism is sweeping all before it. 
Fourteen millions of our people profess its creed. A few months ago, 
American prelates assured Papa Pius that our republic would soon be- 
long to Rome. Not many weeks since, an American Catholic bishop 
declared that his church meant to capture the Presidency. It is already 
the power behind the throne. Cardinal Gibbons is a potentate whom 
Cleveland dared not offend, and Roosevelt has been notoriously con- 
trolled in various instances by the same insidious, irresistible influence. 

The greater number of our large cities are ruled by a combination 
of the priests and the saloon-keepers. Our municipal governments are 
the rottenest on earth. From San Francisco to New York, the cry is, 
“Graft, corruption, vice, crime, misery.” Centers of population like 
Philadelphia or Pittsburg are the despair of the patriot. In New York 
alone, thirty million dollars is the amount annually stolen from the 
taxpayers, and under the priest-barkeeper regime the debt of that one 
city has been made as large as the public debt of the United States 
government. 

What, then, is the literal fact? 

While we Protestants are reaching out after Cuba, Jamaica and 
South America, Rome is conquering North America. We are annually 
losing to her in the United States enormously more than we take from 
her in all the other Catholic countries put together. 

Why not let Italy remain Catholic, and Cuba remain Catholic, and 
South America remain Catholic, until we have called home all our 


[14] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


workers, concentrated all our energies, and put Catholicism to rout 7 
our native land? What shall it profit us to redeem South American 
republics and lose our own? 


ke a * +k % mia ok BS ok 


The proposition upon which our republic is founded is that in the 
people rests the sovereignty which makes and changes the governments. 
We deny the Divine Right of kings. We deny the infallibility and 
the supreme power of Popes. We claim that every individual is 
“equally as free and independent” as any other citizen, and that no 
priest has the right to dictate to us in matters of conscience. 

Roman Catholicism threatens the very foundation of our mstitu- 
tions, strikes at the very root of our liberties. x 

A good Catholic is bound to believe that supreme sovereignty is in- 
herent in the holy Papa at-Rome, and that the Papa has the power, as 
the vicegerent of Christ, to depose kings and rule nations. That has 
always been the Catholic doctrine, and the Church boasts that it never 
changes. Tt can wait, it can dissemble, it can wheedle and hoodwink 
and deceive, but it does not change. Its purpose is ever the same, and 
wherever it has been a master it has been a blight. 

So late as 1867, Cardinal Manning, of England, reaffirmed the 
papal doctrine of supreme sovereignty over Christian peoples. Says 


the Cardinal, “It is necessary that . . . the temporal authorities 
should be subject to the spiritual power. . . . Moreover, we de- 


clare, say, define and pronounce it to be altogether necessary to salva- 
tion that every human creature should be subject to the Roman 
Pontiff.” 

Bishop Gilman, of Cleveland, Ohio, in a Lenten Letter, 1873, wrote: 


“Nationalities must be subordinated to religion, and ire must learn that we are 
Catholics FIRST and citizens NEXT. God is above man and THE CHURCH IS 
ABOVE THE STATE.” 


There you have the Roman Catholic doctrine. Jt is at deadly war 
with republican institutions, for we say in our fundamental law that the 
Church shall have nothing to do with the State. They must forever be 
kept separate. Roman Catholicism contends that they must not only 
come together but that the relation between them must be that of 
master and servant. What the Catholics are aiming to do is to give us 
Presidents and Cabinets that will look to Rome for orders. 

When we naturalize a foreigner, we compel him to take an oath 
renouncing allegiance to any and all foreign powers; but the Roman 
Catholics of America are bound to obey, as their supreme, infallible 
master, an old Italian priest, sitting enthroned among the slippery but 
powerful politicians of the Vatican. The profession of faith sanc- 
tioned by the Catholic Council which was held in Baltimore in 1884 
contains the following oath of allegiance: “J pledge and swear true 
obedience to the Roman Pontiff, vicar of Jesus Christ.” 

In case there should be a conflict between the law of our land and 
the laws of the Church, the Catholic must obey his church. 


f 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [15] 


Here is a clause from their Canon law: “Vo oaths are to be kept if 
they are against the interest of the Church.” 

Who is to decide whether the oath is detrimental to the Church ? 
Either the person who took the oath, or his priest, or his Pope. There- 
fore, all oaths are subject to be annulled at the pleasure of the 
hierarchy. 

We Americans believe in lberty of conscience. Our laws safe- 
guard it: The Popes deny it, and make war upon it as a damnable 
heresy. In Roman Catholicism, the priests are, under the holy Papa, 
the keepers of the people’s conscience. Not only does Roman Catholi- 
cism declare that Protestants have no rights where Catholicity is 
triumphant, but the Bishops’ oath binds them to persecute all who will 
not bow to the “our said Lord and his successors.” Our said Lord is, 
of course, the aged Italian gentleman who calls himself the vicar of 
Christ. 

Suppose that Baptist and Methodist clergymen were required to 


take a solemn oath to persecute the Catholics—there would be a howl, 


wouldn’t there? Yet nobody says a word when Catholic Bishops are 
sworn in, as persecutors of the Protestants. 

Princes of the Roman hierarchy very frankly declare that they only 
allow liberty of conscience where they are in the minority. Where they 
are in the majority, they refuse it and they persecute. 

As to the public schools, everybody knows where Catholicism 
stands. It is waging relentless warfare against the free, non-sectarian 
school, the purpose being to put the children i in the power of the nuns 
and the priests. W herev er Rome has ruled she has left the people 
sunk in ignorance. Never has she favored popular education. Never 
has she encouraged the laity to study the Bible. Yn every possible way 
she has striven to make learning a sealed book to the masses, compelling 
them to look to the priest for guidance. 

Against our system of popular education, the holy Papa and his 
satellites have launched the poisoned shafts of bitter religious hatred. 
Our public schools are characterized as filthy, vicious, diabolical, god- 
less, scandalous, pestilential, a social plague, breeders of unresti:ained 
immorality. 

Our forefathers knew what the Roman Catholic hierarchy was. 


/ Its record—reeking with crime and fraud—was familiar to them. Its 


enmity to popular rights, its foul partnership with tyrannical kings, 
its frightful atrocities of persecution, its devouring greed and its cor- 
rupting influence upon nations, were but too well known. The con- 
vents which had become brothels, the shameless sale of licenses to com- 
mit sin, the peddling of indulgencies which remitted sin, the massa- 
cres encouraged by the Church, the ghastly and wholesale murders of 
the Inquisition, the broods of bastards that clung around the knees of 
Cardinals and Popes, the monstrous impositions and hypocrisies by 
which the priests preyed upon the masses while holding them down in 
the densest ignorance,—victims of the nobility, of the king and of the 
papal hierarchy,—had excited a profound indignation in the men who 


[16] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


framed our government. Everything that the Fathers could do to 
save us from the insidious encroachments of priest-craft was done. 

But the children forgot the reason why the Fathers so dreaded 
the Catholic Church. The children know not the record of crime and 
devastation which caused our forefathers to detest the Roman hier- 
archy. Consequently, the Pope has found our republic an easy prey to 
his designs. In the year 1800 there were but fifty priests at work in 
the United States. In 1890, there were 8,332. At present there are 
more than 15,000! In 1800, there were but 10,000 Catholic converts 
in the United States. In 1890, there were 8,277,039. At present there 
are 14,000,000. In 1800, the Catholics had no foothold in this country, 
and no appreciable influence upon public affairs. At present they are 
powerful in all our cities; and in the great West, which will rule the 
future of this country, the Catholics have grown enormously and al- 
most have controlling numbers. In 1800, there were 3,030 evangelical 
churches; now there are nearly fifty times as many. But the Catholics 
had no churches in 1800, while they now have 12,449. They have almost 
doubled the number of their churches in twenty years. 

In view of these statistics, the warning of LaFayette, himself a 
Catholic, is worth remembering. The “Knight of Liberty” knew the 
political record of the Catholic hierarchy, and he predicted: 


“If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the 
hands of the Romish clergy.” 


Already we have members of our highest lawmaking body who 
consider it an honor to be allowed to kiss the foot of aman! Already 
we have members of the United States Supreme Court, and one mem- 
ber of the Cabinet, who would feel incredibly elated at being given a 
Vatican “audience,” in which they would humbly kneel before a man, 
and touch his slipper with their devout lips. Already we have fourteen 
millions of people in America to whom the privilege of abasing them- 
selves in the presence of a venerable Italian priest is an unattainable 
blessing of which they can only dream, while they from a distance 
adore. 

God of our Fathers! Isn’t 1t enough to terrify the American pa- 
triot, when he sees the unthinking girls who are burying themselves 
alive in the convents, sees the priest shackling the press; sees the papal 
politician working the wires of public policies; sees the Church of 
idolatry and superstition absorbing our people by the million and eat- 
ing the heart of independence out of a great nation? 

Protestant missionaries! Again we ask you, what will it profit 
ourselves, our country, or our God to redeem Jamaica and Cuba and 
South America from the Romish priests AND LOSE TO THEM 
OUR OWN REPUBLIC? 


K * ** * oo * 1 * ae 
“God’s Missionary Plan for the World,” is the modest title which 


Bishop J. W. Bashford gives to his book and his plan. What a com- 
fortable state of mind one must have attained to identify himself with 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [17] 


Jehovah in that complacent manner! Is it not barely thinkable that 
the Bishop’s plan may be the Bishop’s, without being God’s? 

Not more than fifty years ago we had a little ‘“one-hoss” Baptist 
preacher officiating at our synagogue, and he thought that we were 
going to keep him as long as he wanted to stay, and he concluded that 
he needed a parsonage. First of all he selected the name “Pastorium” 
for this parsonage; and then he opened his campaign to get it built. 
He told us that God wanted a Pastorium for our church, and he con- 
tinued to tell us that until he got the ladies going,—and, of course, that 
settled it. We had to build the house for this little preacher, and never 
once had he said that he wanted it. With great unction, fervor, and 
deep conviction he hammered us with the assertion that God wanted it, 
—so the Pastorium was built and the little preacher, piously pleased, 
moved in. 

We have not the shghtest doubt that, in this case, our pastor sin- 
cerely believed that he spoke the truth when he declared from the pulpit 
that the Lord wanted a Pastorium; nor can we doubt that Bishop 
Bashford is entirely honest in saying that the mission plan adopted by 
himself and his brethren is God’s plan. 

Nevertheless, it may not be the divine arrangement. When one 
searches the Scriptures, it is easy to find texts which appear to mean 
that a man’s duty is to provide first for those who are dependent upon 
him. Responsibility has its birth at the hearthstone. First of all, we 
owe duties to wife and child, as the wife and child owe duties to 
husband and father. Both in morals and in law, every citizen is re- 
sponsible first for himself and household. Charity, beginning at home, 
reaches forth, expands its scope and makes one love his neighbors. In 
a large sense, one’s state is his household, and after his state comes his 
nation. In exactly the same sense that the members of one’s family 
constitute his household, the citizens of one’s own country are his na- 
tional family. One of the national airs of France was inspired by that 
very idea. Now, since God condemns the man who neglects his own 
household, and classes him as worse than an infidel, it would seem that 
national polity should be framed along the same lines. 

He who would go forth to carry medicine to the sick of a stranger’s 
house, leaving his own wife or child sick and unattended, would be 
justly considered an unnatural husband and parent. He who would 
carry food and raiment to the naked and hungry family of a stranger, 
leaving his own household to perish of want, would be thought a luna- 
tic. He who would establish hospitals, commissaries and free schools 
for those who were strangers to him in creed and blood, leaving his 
own poor unfed, and letting his own child grow up in squalor’ and 
brutish ignorance, could hardly expect to escape the scorn and the 
indignation of all right-minded people. 

This is the charge which the Jeffersonian brings against the present 
plan of Foreign Missions. 

Brother! In the name of the Most High, study the books which 
reveal the awful conditions existing in our own country. Think of the 


[18] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


illiteracy, of the pauperism, of the orgies of vice and crime, of the 
irreligion which has either emptied the churches or fills them with in- 
different, perfunctory adherents. 

In the State of Alabama there are 66,072 MERE between the ages 
of ten and fourteen, who can not read and write. In Georgia, the num- 
ber is 63,329. In Louisiana, 55,691. In South Carolina, 51,536. In 
North Carolina, 51,190. In Mississippi, 44,334. In Tennessee, 36,375. 
In Texas, 35,491. In Virginia, 34,612. In Arkansas, 26,972. In Ken- 
tucky, 21,247. One-third of the native whites of the Southern States, 
over ten years of age, are unable to read and write.” 

Are not those figures an indictment of our present system of Foreign 
Missions. HOW DARE, WE. GO ABROAD AWITH Sriee 
SCHOOLS, TEMPTING THE HEATHEN TO ACCEPT A FREE 
EDUCATION BY GIVING THEM BOARD AND CLOTHING, 
WHEN MILLIONS OF OUR OWN: CHILDREN ARE UTTERLY 
ITTAITER ATIC? | 

Even among those children who can go to school, conditions prevail 
which wring the heart. In January, 1909, it was officially stated that 
6,000 of the pupils of New York City were hungry all the time. 

In this land of the free and of Christ, there are 1,752,187 child 
slaves, mostly white children. Their minds and their bodies are being 
sacrificed to commercial greed. There are more than half a million 
wage-earners killed and wounded every year in the various industrial 
pursuits; and the greater number of these “accidents” could be pre- 
vented were not dividends so much more highly valued than human 
lives. 

At least ten per cent. of our entire population is in distress all the 
time. We have 125,000 famihes that own one-third of the property in 
the Union, and we have thirty million people who own nothing. ‘Ten 
per cent. of the dead of our richest city go to the potter’s field. 

Brothers, listen! There is a morgue in Christian New York, where 
bereaved parents bring their dead babies to be put on ice until the 
parents may be able to give them burial. Every year, sia thousand 
babes of the poor are brought to the morgue and placed in the refrig- 
erator. No corpses are received excepting those who died of natural 
causes or accidents. Victims of scarlet fever, or other infeetious dis- 
eases, are rejected. 

Are the infants, who are brought there because the parents are too 
poor to bury them, ever buried? No. It is Denis O’Sullivan who 
writes of this morgue in the book which he named “The Cold-Storage 
Baby.” 

Mr. O'Sullivan visited the place, saw the tiny corpses and talked 
with the man in charge. Says the author: “TI asked him where these 
babies were buried. His answer was, ‘They don’t last long.” 

The dead children thus stored away on ice are from one month to 
two years old. Six thousand per year, in one of our Cities! 

In the same city murders are committed on an average of three a 
day, and the crimes against women roll up a perennial list of horrors. 


* = % ok - * * * * 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [19] 


Professor Franklin H. Giddings says, “We are witnessing today, 
beyond question, the decay of republican institutions. No man in his 
right mind can deny it.” . 

That is a true saying. Our political situation grows worse and 
worse; our industrial system is concentrating all power and wealth into 
the hands of a few; our moral condition, as shown by the record, is 
enough to send a fire-bell warning to every Christian worker in foreign 
fields, calling him, Come home! Come home! Wet your Chinese con- 
verts finish the work in China! Let the natives of heathen lands whom 
you have redeemed, complete what has been nobly begun. But do you 
come home, and help us save ourselves! 

Members of our own household,—bone of our bone, flesh of our 
flesh, are dying of cold and hunger and homelessness,—we want the 
dispensaries and the hospitals and the medicines for these. Our own 
children need to be rescued from the regions of darkness, clad in decent 
apparel, put to school, and taught to know Christ. 

Suppose the same amount of money had been applied to Home Mis- 
sions, and that the same devoted men and women had toiled for sixty 
years in the home field—would we now have the awful conditions 
which threaten the future of this republic? 

Could not the white-slave traffic be stamped out? Could not the 
reeking slums be redeemed? Could not the ravening brutes who pursue 
unprotected women be put under lock and key? Could not the de- 
pravity which has taken possession of the stage be shamed and checked ? 
Could not the ban be put upon women who smoke and drink? Could 
not the morals of our young people be elevated? Could not the Augean 
stables of municipal government be cleaned out? Could not the news- 
papers and the publishing houses be compelled to deny publicity to 
items and to books which appéal to evil passions? Could we not hft 
the standards of right-living, until it would be impossible for cynics 
like Harriman, who boasted that he could buy courts and legislatures, 
to be publicly honored by our Chambers of Commerce ? 

Who does not know that the asylums, sanitariums, hospitals, and 
penitentiaries cover a multitude of sins? Who can be ignorant of the 
awful waste of human life in sweat-shops, rolling-mills, mines, match- 
factories, railway service and packing establishments? Who does not 
know that in every one of our larger cities there are dens of shame 
where women are held in bondage for the vilest purposes? Who can 
pick up a metropolitan paper without seeing news items and ad vertise- 
ments which reveal social conditions that wring one’s heart and almost 
stupefy one’s thoughts? 

Could we not'CONCENTRATE OUR AIMS AND OUR ENER- 
GIES, AND REDEEM OUR OWN LAND, FIRST? 


% * * % % oe a * cS 


A blessing would it be for Italy, were the holy Papa of our Roman 
Catholic friends to devote his treasures to the uplift of the Italians. 


[20] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


Within sight of St. Peter’s towering dome there is an ocean of vice and 
crime and ignorance and irreligion and sordid poverty which would 
break holy Papa’s heart, were he indeed the Father of his people. 

So it is in England, where Christianity rules with undisputed sway. 
The cathedrals are hoary with age and gorgeous in wealth; the cere- 
monial is perfect and the lip-service divine: but the spirit of Christ has 
gone out of it. The rich Pharisees whom our Lord blasted with his 
bitter words of invective thrive marvelously in England; and to the 
uttermost regions of earth they send contributions to the heathen; but 
there are millions of men, women and children in Great Britain who 
live and die in such fearful poverty that the black sea of vice swallows 
them up, and they perish without ever having known a school-house,— 
without ever having had the chanee to become Christians. 

You scout this statement as an exaggeration? You need not. Read 
the official reports published by the British government. and you will 
never again sneer at such a statement. You will come to know that 
there are conditions in London, in the manufacturing towns, and in 
the mining districts, which are at least as bad as anything which exists 
in any heathen land. 


Bo ok *k * ok ke ok * oe 


The conclusion of the whole matter is this: We contend that the 
delivery of the message of Jesus Christ to all the world does not include | 
the maintenance throughout the earth of commissaries and the furnish- 
ing of board, tuition, books, fuel and medicine to yellow, brown and 
black children of heathen lands; we contend that the establishment 
and support of free kindergartens, schools and colleges to give an Eng- 
lish education to Hindoos, Chinese and Japanese is altogether a mis- 
taken policy, so long as we leave our own children to grow up without 
the advantages which we are giving to the heathen. 

The little boys and girls of our own land constitute our national 
family. The Good Book tells us that “he who provides not for his own 
household is worse than an infidel”. Why not take Jesus at His word, 
and content ourselves with doing that which he told us to do? Why 
not preach the gospel to the heathen, and let it go at that? Japan is 
rich enough to educate her own children, and is doing it. China is 
wealthy enough to teach her own children, and is doing it. Even India, 
bled white as she is by the oppression of the Christian English, is yet 
able to educate her own dusky little ones, and is doing it. Where, then, 
do we get the moral right to carry free education, hospitals, medicine 
and medical service, dispensaries of free food and raiment to these 
people of foreign countries and an alien race, until we have first fed 
and clothed and educated the members of our own great family? 

One of the sayings of Frances E. Willard, whose life was so beauti- 
fully devoted to the highest and best ideals, is this: “It is better to stir 
an issue without settling it than to settle one without stirring it.” Most 
of us have settled this question of Foreign Missions without having 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [21] 


stirred it; we have been content to hear only one side. Yor the sake 
of yourself, your children, your country and your future, stir the ques- 
tion before you settle it; examine both sides; reach a conclusion that 
satisfies your common sense, and then stick to it and practice it like a 
man. 


CHAPTER II. 


OME time ago the newspapers were announcing, as a glorious 
piece of news, that John D. Rockefeller had agreed to give fifty 
millions of dollars to the cause of education in the Orient. 

China, Japan, Hindustan, Korea, and perhaps other Eastern peoples, 
will be among the beneficiaries of the Oil King’s bounty. 

As Rockefeller’s millions have been wrung from our own people, 
how can we rejoice that so large a part of the loot is to be sent to the 
Orient, when there are so many schools and colleges needed for our 
own boys and girls? 

The Orientals are a cunning people. If once they are impressed by 
the notion that they can secure for themselves a large percentage of 
American wealth by pretending to embrace the Christian religion, 
human wisdom would be baffled by the question: 


“Are the Orientals embracing our faith for the sake of the religion, or are they 
seeking the religion to get our money?” 


Denominational papers seem to think that they make an unanswer- 
able argument in favor of the present system of subsidized Christianity 
in pagan lands when they present the statistics of American wasteful- 
ness, vice and demoralizing self-indulgence. 

They argue thus: The American people waste $11,000,000 annually 
on chewing-gum; therefore, it is justifiable to furnish free secular 
education, free medical treatment, and free medicines to the yellow 
men of the far East, while we neglect the destitute and ignorant whites 
of North Georgia. The American people waste $750,000,000 per year 
on tobacco; therefore it is advisable to ignore the physical, mental and 
spiritual wants of the poverty-cursed people of mountainous Tennessee, 
Kentucky and Carolina, while we lavish our care, toil and money upon 
heathen of an alien race thousands of miles away. 

Such logic appeals to nobody but a fanatic on Foreign Missions. It 
is so puerile, so utterly childish that it does not merit serious attention. 
I would not mention it at all were it not for the deplorable fact that our 
denominational papers countenance and encourage the twaddle. So 
unaccustomed are clergymen and denominational organs to having 
their statements questioned and their arguments answered, that the 
Advocate actually endeavored to break the force of the facts cited by 
me, and the scriptural texts referred to by me, by. telling its readers 
that I live in a “magnificent home,” dictate to a stenographer, and hire 
an overseer for my farms. Consequently, my views on Foreign Mis- 
sions can not possibly be sound. No matter what I may be able to 
prove, about the methods of missionaries, and about the actual mean- 


[22] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


ing of Christ as exemplified by his disciples, I am not to be heeded, be- 
cause of my house, my stenographer, and my overseer ! 

Well, that kind of logic is fully as good as some people need—and 
some people can furnish. 


ok Kk *% Kk i DS * BS * 


The question of Foreign Missions is of transcendant importance. 

First, a Christian duty is involved. We must find out what that is, 
if we can. Having learned what it is, we must perform it. 

Second, a Christian task is to be done. We must ascertain the na- 
ture and the extent of this task, and then we must shoulder it. 


SOOCHOW UNIVERSITY, SOOCHOW, CHINA. 
Rey. D. L. Anderson, D.D., President. 


Made possible by the magnificent offering of $50,000 at the Missionary Conference 
in New Ocleans, April 24-30, 1901. 


What is the duty which Christendom owes to the heathen ? 

In the simplest words, I venture to express it thus: “Z’o go into all 
the world, and preach Christ and him crucified.” | 

If you use the word preach you arrive at precisely the same scrip- 
tural meaning that one gets from the words “to proclaim,” “to herald,” 
“to explain,” “to announce.” 

In every instance, Christ limited his instructions so that his full 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [23] 


meaning can be expressed in our word preach. <A fair paraphrase of 
the language of Jesus is this: 


“As I have explained My Gospel to you, do you go and explain it to all the 
world. I have in person given My commands to you,—go you and tell all the world 
what those commands are.” : 


That is all there is to it—absolutely all. That much is divine, 
direct from Christ. Anything more than that is human, not from 
Christ. 

How did the disciples understand it? Surely they had the best of 
opportunities to learn Christ’s exact meaning. We, nearly two thou- 
sand years later, are left to the text of the New Testament, and to our 
own fallible understanding of that text; but Peter and John were wan- 
dering around with the Master, and heard a// that he had to say. 
Where his meaning was uncertain, they could ask questions and re- 
ceive His answers. On all matters of importance, it is to be presumed 
that they did ask, and ask, and ASA, until they Anew they understood 
what he wanted them to do. Hence, we must assume that the disciples 
understood what Christ meant when he said, “Go ye into all the world 
and preach.” 

Let us, then, go back to the primitive times of the Church, when 
the disciples had scattered to the four quarters to establish Foreign 
Missions. 

What they did in pursuance of Christ’s commands is the very 
highest evidence of ow they understood him. And their understand- 
ing of what Jesus told them is the best evidence of what our Lord 
meant. 

The Master told His disciples to go and do a certain thing: they 
went and did it: the conclusive presumption is that they understood 
the Master and carried out His instructions. The manner in which 
they planted the Gospel in heathen lands és the scriptural way. Paul 
so understood it, for his way conformed to that standard. 

Now, when we look over the broad fields of Foreign Missions to- 
day, the first thought that suggests itself is—Pawl and the disciples 
never did do it that way! 

We find that the system now in operation is a total departure from 
the practice of Paul, of the disciples, and of the early Church,—there- 
fore the burden of proof is upon the fanatics who have fastened to us 
a system which hires a heathen to call himself a Christian, and which 
tempts the needy of pagan lands to profess conversion by offering re- 
lief from physical suffering. 

How did the apostles of the Christian faith carry it out of Judea 
and spread it among all nations? | 

One or more of them would go to Corinth, or Philippi, or Antioch, 
or Thessalonica, or Rome, and preach, until converts were made. Then 
these converts were organized into a church and put to work, so that 
these converts would convert other citizens of the same region, who in 
turn would organize other churches and win other converts. Thus 


[24] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


the endless chain was made. Thus the fire was kindled and left to 
burn. Thus a fountain was called into existence and left to flow, and 
to deepen and broaden as it ran. 

The apostles did not squat down in any one community and depend 
upon the home church in Palestine to send out rations and money and 
medicine and clothes every year. The home church in Judea did not 
take up collections for the pagans of Syria or Egypt. No! The home 
church took care of itself, and left the new converts in Gentile lands 
to organize and support themselves. 

All that Paul and other pioneers of Christ did was to help the new 
churches with advice and instructions. Study those letters in the New 
Testament and convince yourself. 

Paul did not set up any schools for secular training. He left all such 
matters to the people of the several communities in which he labored. 
He did not found colleges to teach the children of Roman parents 
Greek or Hebrew. No. He taught the Gospel of Christ, just as the 
disciples did, and he made that the measure of his mission. 

Can you picture Paul running’ a dispensary, and tramping around 
loaded up with patent medicines, porous plasters and surgical instru- 
ments, eager to give free treatment to diseased Mexicans, Brazilians, 
Koreans and Ceylonese? Can you imagine Paul pestering the home 
church to death with his everlasting howls for more money—more for 
the kindergarten in Rome, more for the college at Antioch, more for 
the free schools in Greece, and thus making his own country bear the 
expense of doing what Antioch, Rome and Greece should do for them- 
selves? Above all, can you for one instant believe that Paul would 
have given regular salaries to the new converts, thus creating the im- 
pression among the poor folks of Antioch and Rome that it would pay 
to turn Christian ? 

No! It is inconceivable. Paul’s converts organized their own 
churches, and all the help they ever asked and got from him was advice. 
His converts were real, genuine Christians, and they supported their 
own churches and schools. Not only that, they sent aid to Paul and 
they put missionaries in distant fields. 

I challenge any denial of this. And I say that Paul’s methods were 
the right methods, the methods meant by Christ. I contend that Paul’s 
system of foreign missionary work is the true gauge of our duty and 
the true measure of our task. 

Now let us examine the system that has been fastened upon us of 
late years. Let us see to what extent it is consistent with the scriptural 
standards established by the Fathers of the Church. 

If the present system is something else, let us ask it—“By what 
right do you exist? By what right do you tax us? By what right are 
you clamorously demanding so much more of our money to be drained 
off into foreign countries? By what right do you bring so much unfair 
pressure to bear upon comparatively poor men in America to furnish 
elaborate education to heathen children in such rich countries as China 
and India and Japan? 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [25] 


Unless scriptural authority can be shown for it, the system should 
be abandoned. China is abundantly able to feed, clothe and educate 
her children. Let China do it. The wealthier classes in India can easily 
afford to support the educational system of Hindustan. It is their 
moral duty to do it, not ours. So with Japan. Until we had banished 
illiteracy from our own country, I contend that it is unnatural and un- 
patriotic and unwise to be taking upon our shoulders the illiteracy of 
the nations beyond the seas. 

Apparently the clergy and the denominational editors have been 
bothered by numerous inquiries since the Jeffersonian put its search- 
light on the practices of foreign missionaries. Angry sermons have 
been preached and virulent editorials written. In these, I have been 
handled with extreme severity. My statements have been denounced 


HIROSHIMA GIRLS’ SCHOOL—JAPAN. 


as “absurdly ridiculous and absolutely false.” My position in the mat- 


ter has been attributed to crass and comprehensive ignorance. In 
language more or less pointed, I have been told, in effect, the /effer- 
sonian had better stick to politics and let church affairs alone. Finally, 
the Wesleyan Christian Advocate enters a sweeping denial to my asser- 
tions and disposes of me, by virtually saying that I am disqualified for 
the discussion—because I live in a “magnificent home,” and have not 
only a stenographer, but an overseer. 

This is somewhat terrible, but nevertheless, my hand being to the 
plow, the furrow must be finished. 

In order that the subject might be handled with the utmost fairness, 
T have confined my researches to books, pamphlets and papers which 
favor Foreign Missions. I have not gone to the enemy for ammunition. 
On the contrary, my clergymen acquaintances were requested to fur- 


[26] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


nish me everything their libraries afforded 7m advocacy of Foreign 
Missions. J have accordingly been supplied with a mass of literature, 
all of which is published in the interest of Foreign Missions. 


ES *k ok * *K * * * *k 


Those who have undertaken to defend the secular education which 
isa part of the work of Foreign Missions have boldly asserted that the 
schools established in heathen lands are self-supporting. If the hea- 
then are maintaining at their own cost the elaborate system which 
takes their children into kindergarten, conducts them through the 
schools and finishes them off in the college, that is their right. If they 
yearn for an English education so earnestly that they are willing to 
pay for it, let them have it, by all means. And the clergymen who 
come up against me on this issue assert that the heathen are supporting 
the schools. The Advocate declares that so far as the Methodist schools 
are concerned, it knows their 
schools in heathen lands are 
self-supporting. 

Well,—“Gentlemen of the 
jury, that makes the issue 
which you are to try.” 

Do the heathen support the 
schools which foreign mission- 
aries establish in pagan lands? 

I say that they do not, and 
that they have never done so. 
From the books and pamphlets 
and papers, in favor of Foreign 
Missions, furnished me by the 
preachers, I will prove that 
these kindergartens, schools, 
colleges and dispensaries are 
not self-supporting. 

The American Board of 
Missions in its Almanac for 
1909 publishes much statistical 
information. Ordinarily, I 
would not quote from an Alma- 
nac in a public discussion, but 
as this one was published in the 
interest of Foreign Missions, 

Night-workers in a cotton mill in the South. One we may safely assume that it 
of the schools for our babies. The good missionaries Ane 
wouldn’t allow such an outrage upon the Chineseand contains no statement made for 
BUR Prete the purpose of throwing cold 

water on the work. 

On page 32, I find the “condensed tabular view of Missions of A. 
B. C. F. M., 1907-8.” The countries embraced in the report are Africa, 
Turkey, Ceylon, China, Japan, Micronesia, the Philippines, Mexico, 
Spain and Austria. 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [27] 


These Foreign Missions maintained 554 churches, 1,293 schools. 
employed more than 4,700 preachers, teachers and other workers. 

Now, how much do you suppose was the total amount of native 
contributions to defray the cost of that great work ? 

It was $254,000. To say nothing of the running expenses of the 
churches, there were 64,546 pupils in the schools. How many teachers 
had to be hired for that multitude of children? You can figure that 
out for yourself. If we apply to the schools alone, the entire sum 
collected from the heathen, we will see that the children were given 
schooling at a cost of four dollars each per year. One dollar per 
quarter would be cheap education, wouldn’t it? But, of course, the 
heathen contributions went only in part to the schools, some of it going 
to the support of the churches. The total outlay of the Board for these 
churches and schools is given at $795,090. Therefore, they fall short 
of being self-supporting by more than $500,000. In other words, the 
heathen contribute less than one-third of the total expense. 

On page 35 of the same Almanac is found statistics of “Principal 
Foreign Missionary Societies of the Evangelical Churches of the 
United States, 1907-8.” 

The total of native contributions, for all purposes, is given at 
$1,564,981. 

The societies operate in some of the most opulent parts of heathen- 
dom,—countries that have been wealthy and civilized. 

The native contributions, amounting to a million and a half dollars, 
have to be divided among 5,745 churches, 1,105 principal stations, 10,- 
410 out-stations, 32,000 preachers and workers, and 344,553 natives 
“under instruction.” I regret that the report does not tell us the num- 
ber of schools, but as the number of those under instruction was meant 
for pupils (as other reports in the Almanac prove) we have facts 
enough to go on. It takes no other argument than the figures them- 
selves to convince you that the heathen who contributed only $1,564,- 
981 could not have kept up the schools, even if none of their contribu- 
tions had gone to the support of the churches (5,745) and of the 
stations (11,575) and of the 32,000 preachers and workers. 

In this report, each denominational organization appears separately. 
Curious to learn how the figures bear out the confident statement of the 
Advocate, I select the statistics of the Methodist societies. 

The Methodist Episcopal Church is reported to have collected from 
the heathen less than half a million dollars and to have spent upon them 
more than two millions. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, is 
reported as collecting from the heathen $39,000, and spending on them 
$727,729. 

Where are the heathen doing any self-support church work and 
school work? 

The exception to the rule is that they do, the rule is that they don’t. 
Where one college favorably situated, and after a decade of toil and 
expense, has at last been brought to a basis of self-support, a great shout 
of victory goes up, and Christendom rings with it; but nothing much 


[28] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


is said in the papers about the thousands of schools that have been a 
dead expense, and which apparently never will be anything else. The 
Advocate hooted at my statement that heathen children had been bribed 
to attend missionary schools by the offer of food, clothing, books, cash 
and other persuaders. The Advocate denounced this as the “shallow 
vaporing of Mr. Watson.” The deep men who write editorials for the 
Advocate have been too busy (or too worried about my house, my 
stenographer and my overseer) to read the evidence of such mission- 
aries as Rey. T. P. Crawford who worked in the Chinese field for fifty 
years. I quoted what he said that he and his wife had to do in order 
to get the Chinese children to the mission schools. But Crawford was 
a Baptist preacher, and perhaps the Advocate is waiting for the intro- 
duction of some Methodist witnesses. All right. Here goes: 

In its issue of March 5th, 1909, the Wesleyan Christian Advocate 
published a Report on the Foreign Missions of the Methodist Church, 
pages 26 and 27. The editors prefaced the statistics by saying that 
“the facts concerning the work of our church abroad should encourage 
us greatly in our prayers and our giving.” 

Let us take a look at these facts which are to make us pray more 
and give more. 

We find the China mission first, of course. All of us are going 
crazy about China,—consequently China heads this encouraging list. 

According to the Advocate, we (Methodists) have three hospitals 
and one dispensary over there, and eight self-supporting churches, and 
we collected from the Chinese, for all purposes, the sum of forty-three 
hundred dollars. If that amount is correctly given, it is pitiful. The 
Methodist Chinese Mission was opened in 1848, and organized into a 
conference in 1886, and yet the church can collect in one of the richest 
countries in the world, where there are more than 400,000,000 people, 
only the beggarly little wad of $4,300! Surely, the Advocate must 
have got the 1 figur es wrong. We can not, humanly, increase our prayers 
and our gifts on such encouragement as that. 

Japan is also one of the rich, powerful, civilized countries, and the 
Advocate tells about mission work there. 

The Methodists have only thirteen churches there, and but three 
of these support themselves. Ten are unable to stand alone. They 
have to he in the arms of the Home Church, and draw nourishment 
from her motherly breast. 

In the great, prosperous Brazil, there are twenty-four churches and 
but five of them can stand on their own legs. 

The Central Mexican Mission has not a single self-supporting 
church; the Mexican Border Conference is in the same fix. 

Does the Advocate mean to say that “converts” who won’t support 
their churches will support their mission schools? I invite the editors 
to give us the facts in detail. How many schools have you in China, 
Japan, India, South America, ete.? How much is the total cost, and 
how much of that do you get from the natives? 

In Nashville, Tenn., there is a Methodist paper called Go For- 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [29] 


ward. It is an aggressive paper, and the way it whoops up Foreign 
Missions is in keeping with its name. 

Asking you to bear in mind that the Advocate claims that the 
Methodist mission schools, in heathen lands, are self-supporting, I will 
quote a few bits of evidence to the contrary from Go Forward. 

January, 1909. Miss E. Ling Soong writes to Go Forward, and 
among other things descriptive of conditions in China, she says: 


“Seattered all over the country are government schools, which offer educational 
advantages to any earnest student. Besides these, there are mission schools support- 
ed by the Christian Churches of the West.” 


Miss E. Ling Soong ought to know. She is a Chinese woman, a 
resident of China. She is describing conditions in her own country, 
as she saw them in the latter 
part of 1908. And she tells 
Go Forward that the mission 
schools are supported by the 
Christian Churches of the 
West. If those schools are self- 
supporting, why does this Chi- 
nese lady speak of them as 
subsidized schools? 

March 5, 1909, Bishop Seth 
Ward has an article in the 
Christian Advocate of Nash- 
ville, Tenn. The paper is Meth- 
odist, and the Bishop is a Meth- 
odist. Hear ye him: 


SIX KOREAN STUDENTS OF THE OFFICIAL 
CLASS, SONGDO, KOREA. 


“The support of missionaries 
the establishment and maintenance 
of schools of lower grade are the 
usual beginnings of missionary work, and are forms of service that may be supported 
at moderate cost.” 


This Methodist Bishop not only sustains my position as to the 
facts, but proves that free secular sc hooling is a regular feature in mis- 
sionary work. 

March, 1906. Ida L. Shannon writing Go Forward about the 
Hiroshima Girls School, speaks of the free kindergarten, where the 
little heathen are so tenderly taken in hand and given that early train- 
ing which millions of poor children in America do not receive. 

October, 1906. Miss Fannie Montague reporting on the school at. 
El Paso, which is patronized by El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, says: 


“There has never been any tuition charged.” 


February, 1908. Miss Mary Myers writing to Go Forward from 
Korea describes the “ideal location” and conditions of the Lucy Cuning- 
gim school for Korean girls. There are thirty lovely little heathen 


[30] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


Misses in this school learning English, “Chinese classics,” physiology, 
geography and other things good for heathen girls. Says Miss Myers, 
“There are children kept away for lack of room and money.” Whose 
money? Evidently, the money of the home churches. Miss Mary’s 
fascinating picture of that ideal Korean school leads up winningly to a 
plea for the passing around of the hat here in the West. 

In the same number of Go Forward, we find a stout communica- 
tion from Brother W. G. Cram. He does not mince his words. He 
hits out straight from the shoulder,—does Brother Cram. Says he: 


“We as a Church owe the young manhood and womanhood of our Church an edu- 
eation and they must have it.” 


: 
Brother Cram is not speaking of what “we owe” to the young 
manhood and womanhood of America, but to what “we owe” to the 
boys and girls of Horea. Brother Cram tells our Methodist brethren 
that “appeals for new buildings or equipment should be promptly re- 
sponded to, for no better investment of the money can be made.” 

That doesn’t sound as if Brother Cram expected the Koreans to 
support the system of education which “we owe” to their boys and girls, 
does it? Fanaticism has complete control of the missionary mind when 
we find it advancing the claim that the Methodist Church, South, owes 
a secular education to boys and girls of Korea. 

In the same issue of Go Forward, there is a letter from Miss 
Lilhan Nichols of Seoul, Korea. She describes the inner workings of 
the Carolina Institute for Korean girls. This school was founded by 
American money, and is supported by the Home Church. Korean girls 
of ten years of age are taken into the institution and kept continuously 
there until they marry. Miss Lillian says so herself. She says that at 
first she thought it was very hard on the mothers of these tots to take 
their little daughters away from them, but “as I find more and more 
how little these mothers can do for their children, I rejoice to see them 
come into our school,” where so much can be done for them. In the 
Carolina Institute the Korean girls are lodged, boarded, dressed, edu- 
‘ated and kept in ideal comfort until they marry! 

I wonder how many Carolina Institutes we American Christians 
might fill, in these United States; and I wonder how it is that, with 
such letters as Miss Lillian’s appearing every month in Methodist peri- 
odicals, the editors of the Advocate have the cheek to say that the mis- 
sion schools of “our church” are self-supporting. 

Miss Lillian’s long and interesting communication winds up with 
the usual winning plea for more money. She says that the need is 
pressing and “the opportunity is urgent.” I believe it. Simple, stupid 
and utterly negligible as the Koreans are, they are not so blind as not 
to recognize a good thing. Cosy quarters, comfortable clothing, three 
square meals a day, free education and industrial training,—even the 
childish Koreans appreciate a soft snap of that kind. 

In the same issue of Go Forward, is what appears to be an edito- 
rial appeal for funds to establish a new mission station in Korea. The 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [31] 


sum needed was $5,000. Three thousand dollars had been subscribed 
in the South, but that wasn’t enough. Whooping up the faithful for 
the other two thousand, the editor says, “We can not afford to hesitate, 
and we can not afford to lose this opportunity. The other two thou- 
sand dollars we must have, and we must have it soon. Every dollar 
now will count for two and a half in the outcome.” 

The ministerial mind is given to subtleties, but we really would 
hke to know how the editor of Go Forward figured the thing out in 
that particular way. How did he arrive at the two dollars and a half? 
When our prognostications and ratiocinations get the future of our 
spiritual welfare demonstrated in fractions of a dollar, we are certain- 
ly going some/ 

July, 1903. The editor of Go Forward informs his excited sub- 
scribers that he has received a letter from Rev. K. Ashida, professor in 
Kwansei Gakium, Japan. Brother Ashida, we are told, is a graduate 
of Vanderbilt University. He is a convert, and is now trying to 
Christianize his fellow Japs. Go Forward assures us that Brother 
Ashida is thoroughly prepared for that work, and that “Azs soul is in 
it.” Yet we are pained to learn that Brother Ashida is dissatisfied with 
salary paid him 
by the Home 
Church. In 
fact, he is kick- 
ing about it. In 
this, he has the 
sympathy of 
Go Forward. 
The editor says 
it “ts a disgrace 
to the Church 
that attempts on 
such  pittances 
to maintain a 

Typical American children who are fought for by both mill and school. College supply- 
The average age in one school was nine years, and the teachers give the °y cate 
names of thirty-five children from seven to fourteen who have been compelled ng a Christian 
to forsake educational opportunities for employment in the mill. Similar ‘ 
deplorable conditions can be found in the majority of the cotton-mill towns. education to 

compete with 
the splendid facilities offered by the Japanese schools.” 

Reader, think a moment—/for God’s sake, THINK. 

Here is Japan,—progressive, victorious, powerful, rich. She has 
offered her children “splendid facilities” for education. Yet the Meth- 
odist Church, South, is required to pour money into Japan to compete 
with the Japanese government in giving a secular schooling to Japan- 
ese children ! 

Could fanaticism be madder? Where is the scripture for this un- 
natural and impossible task? How can the people of this country be 
expected to educate their own children and bear, at the same time, 
the expense of secular education to the hundreds of millions of heathen 


[38 FOREIGN MISSIONS 


children whose own governments are offering them “splendid facilities” 
in their public schools? 

When I reveal the facts to our people, in order that they may give 
with their eyes open, 1 am savagely denounced. Why so? What wrong 
have I done? Isitasin to let in the hght? Is it a crime to publish the 
truth ? 

I urged our people to stop where Christ stopped, where the disciples 
stopped, where Paul and the early Fathers stopped. I urge our people 
not to do more for the heathen than Paul and the disciples did, wnt 
we have first discharged our full duty to our own flesh and blood, our 
own kith and kin, our own national household. Is this treason to 
Christ? I can not think so. ¥ 

Ah, they pretend that all this talk about furnishing free schooling 
in the Foreign Mission work is the “shallow vaporings” of that bad 
man, Watson,— 
who is a disturb- 
er of the peace, a 
bull in the crock- 
ery department, 
a hawk in the 
fowl- yard, an 
evil-minded _per- 
son who dwells 
in magnificence, 
employs a sten- 
ographer, and 
also an overseer ! 


Oh, the terrors GIRLS AT CAROLINA INSTITUTE, SEOUL, HAVING DINNER 
of clerical logic! ON THE LAWN. 


But let us re- 
sume our knitting, and pick up a few more facts. 

July, 1903. On page 17, of Go Forward, we find “The Appor- 
tionment of Needs.” The faithful are told that “The Committee on 
the Forward Movement for Foreign Missions decided to ask first of 
all that provisions be made for the following objects in the amounts 
named : 


Granbery tOollere, “Brazil 22 ee eee fe ___$15,000 
Kwansel Gakuin, adapan 2) 220 2a ee eee 50,000 
Hiroshima Girls’ School, Japan_____________ oe 10/000 
Purchase of. Mission Property in Cuba___._____________ 25,000 
Training School in Mexico________ Sot See 30,000 
Buildings for Evangelistic Work, China___.__________ 15,000 
Industrial School, Songdo, Korea______ aes 5,000 


Here is a tiny total of $150,000, for schools in heathen lands. Not 
for preachers, not for couriers to carry the glad tidings, not for heralds 
to blow the Gospel bugle and proclaim Christ’s message of soul salva- 
tion! No. The money is to be spent in giving to foreign children that 
which we are not giving to our own! <A secular education which the 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [33] 


foreign governments are amply able to provide, and for which those 
foreign governments are offering “splendid facilities.” 

Now let us examine some of the books, published in favor of 
Foreign Missions. 

Take the large work entitled “Missionary Issues of the Twentieth 
Century,” brought out by order of the Executive Committee of General 
Missionary Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. On 
page 141, is found a discussion of the support of schools and colleges 
out of missionary funds. It is stated that these institutions are “not 
for professional studies nor for training in scientific pursuits.” Even 
these, however, may be 
provided in special 
cases; but, as a rule, 
the secular education 
“supported by general 
mission funds” should 
be restricted to teach- 
ing the student how to 
use his facilities, to 
grounding him in the 
first principles of 
knowledge in the vari- 
ous departments of 
thought and effort, and 
in ethics and great cen- 
tral truths of the Gos- 
pel, in order “that he 
may quadrate his hfe 
by these and become a 
constructive force in 
the moral and social or- 
ganization of the 


The sign of the American mill. The cotton lint on the 


” 
hat and trousers of the oldest boy, gathered from the fine world. 
particles in the atmosphere of the mill, shows the conditions oe | ie ; | 
under which the children work at all times. In this JOOK = pupv- 


lished by the Methodist 
Church, we find that the Church deliberately adopts, as a settled polity, 
the doing of the very thing which the Wesleyan Christian Advocate 
bitterly denies that “our church” does! 

In this book, the Methodist Church sets forth its plan of foreign 
missionary work, and when I published facts showing that the Church 
is working in accordance with the plan adopted,—my statements are 
contradicted. I am accused of ignorance, and I am held up to univer- 
sal execration. To cap the climax of my iniquities, I am indicted for 
having a “magnificent home,” a stenographer and an overseer! 

It’s a shame! Why don’t these Methodist editors read their own 
papers and books? 

On page 158 of the same work, we find the statement that these 
schools “eacept what are known as charity schools, favor some payment, 
however-small, for tuition.” 


[34] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


Now what is the literal fact? Foreign Missionaries have adopted 
the kindergarten, the school, and the college as a regular part of their 
system and we are called upon to support this elaborate system of sec- 
ular education. They collect what they can from the natives,—the de- 
ficit has to come from the people here at home. Why make any bones 
about it? Why not let the cat out of the bag? 

In Bishop Bashford’s book—the book in which he puts forth his 
own views as those.of God—we are told that we must not expect the 
heathen when converted to become self-supporting. We would be ask- 
ing too much if we required a Chinese congregation to support a Chi- 
nese preacher. It would be unreasonable of us to request a Japanese 
congregation to support a Jap minister. Says the Bishop, communi- 
cating “God’s plan” to us, mind you, “To ask these new converts from 
heathenism to become immediately self-supporting is like asking your 
baby in the cradle to earn its own living.” 

What a peculiar statement it is for Bishop Bashford to make—that 
when a Jap or Hindu, or a Chinaman is converted to Christianity, he 
becomes as helpless as a baby and must become a nursling of the Home 
Church! As a heathen, he is capable of earning his own living and 
supporting his idolatrous priests, but the moment he flops and calls 
himself «@ Christian he must be taken care of with Huropean cash! 
And the Bishop declares that it would be unkind of us if we did not 
nurse this religious baby,—how long? The Bishop fails to say. If 
this analogy is true, the infant convert can not be expected to support 
his church until his conversion is fifteen or more years old. 

It wasn’t that way with the heathen converts of Paul, Barnabas, 
Peter and the other pioneers. Their heathen men remained men, 
AFTER conversion; they did not become babies; and they not only 
supported their own churches, but sent out missionaries to spread the 
gospel! 

The fact that an intelligent man, a Bishop! could not only think 
up a statement like Bishop Bashford’s, but actually put it in a book, 
is another evidence of how a man’s mind may degenerate for lack of 
conflict. The Bishop has had nobody to “sass back” at him, and there- 
fore his intellectual habit has become slipshod. 

New converts are like babes in the cradle,—are they? They must 
pull on the teat of the Home Churech—eh? Well, well, WELL! 1 
thought it was a universally accepted fact that if ever a convert, at 
home or abroad, was capable of anything, it was while the change of 
heart was fresh upon him—fresh in the ecstasy, the rapture, the en- 
thusiasm, the zeal, the yearning to go right straight and carry the 
glorious contagion to some unconverted soul. 

And now Bishop Bashford (speaking for God, remember,) tells 
me that I must give up this pleasant illusion, and adopt the view that 
a convert from heathenism is as helpless as a babe, must be nursed at 
the breast, rocked in the cradle, dandled on the knee, carefully robed in 
soft raiment, patiently encouraged to crawl, nicely fitted to the trun- 
dle-bed, and critically tended as he essays to walk. 


FOREIGN MISSIONS at) 


Dear me! I am sorry to hear that. Granting that the Bishop is 
right, however, I am moved to ask, “Couldn’t we spend the same money 
to better advantage here at home, converting Caucasians who will not 
need the nursery process?” 

On pages 36 and 37, Bishop Bashford tells us that the foreign 
missionaries need from three to five million dollars to put the Bible in 
the home of every Chinese family, not to speak of other needy nations. 
Says the Bishop, “The missionary collection must, therefore, supply 
us in the twenty-six pagan lands not only with parsonages, with 
churches, with pastors, with hterature, but with colleges, preparatory 
achools, and seminaries, and in addition with day-schools, correspond- 
ing with the common schools in the United States.” 

Here is a Methodist Bishop, in a book published only two years ago, 
declaring that “God’s plan” demands of the Home Church and home 


TWO W. M. U. TRAINING SCHOOL GIRLS. MISSES ABERNETHY AND HENSLEY 
IN CHEFOO GIRLS’ SCHOOL. 


people the support of a complete system of secular education of the 
heathen. Bishop Bashford declares the Church must do this. He says 
that it is God’s plan. Who told him so? I don’t know, for Christ didn’t 
and the Bible doesn’t. But it is a marvel that when I say in the Jur- 
FERSONIAN that the Church 7s doing the very things which the Bishop 
declares it must do, I am villified and my statements dismissed as “shal- 
low vaporings.” 

Let me be perfectly fair, and admit that the Home Church uses all 
of its influence toward getting these foreign schools on a self-sustain- 
ing basis. Owing to the waking up of China, by the rude shock of re- 
cent wars, she is turning to Western arts and sciences in order that she 
may prepare herself as Japan did, to defend herself in future emer- 
gencies. There is a demand now for Western learning and methods. 
It took the roar of guns and the sight of blood to arouse the Celestials, 
but they are awake at last. They have no idea of accepting our relig- 


s 


[36] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


ion, but they do want to learn what we know. They want to be able to 
do what we do. Therefore, the wealthy classes in China are at last 
patronizing the Western schools, and in that way some of them have 
become self-supporting. But these are the exceptional cases. Gen- 
erally, the mission begins with the free school, and when we bear in 
mind the fact that heathendom has barely been touched and that free 
schools must be opened to at least 800,000,000 heathen,—we can begin 
to realize how frightful is our self-imposed burden. 

The great leading thought is this: Without any Scriptural authority 
for it, we have committed our churches to the policy of going to such 


# 


The six little children in this picture represent the ideal family desired by American mill 
operators—more grist for the hopper in which so many thousands of our children have been 
ground. Driven to desperation by grinding poverty the oldest boy was sent to work before 
our investigator found the family, and the next eldest was about to apply for a “‘fraudu- 
lent” certificate. The case is now being considered by a benevolent organization, with a 
bright prospect of ameliorating these conditions, and before long the children who are old 
enough will be sent to school. 


countries as Japan and China to compete with those governments in 
the secular education of their own children. 

Tt would be a most questionable policy, even if we had erased the 
foul blot of illiteracy from our own map and had so much surplus 
money that it was a nuisance to us;—but to pursue such a course, when 
our people are financially harassed, when two million of our laborers 
are out of work, and our own children—méllions of them—are grow- 
ing up in ignorance and under conditions which are brutalizing, és 
nothing less than A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. 


% * %* a * * * * * 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [37] 


Now let us see what ¢hé Baptists are doing in the foreign field. Let 
us to see to what extent thei schools and colleges in heathendom are 
self-supporting. 

On page 27 of “Mission Economics”, by Rev. C. H. Carpenter, is 
found a summary of the subsidies paid for schools and native workers, 
from 1875 to 1884, inclusive; also the amount contributed by the na- 
tives. : 

In the Japan Mission we spent of our own money $31,534. The 
Japs chipped in to the lavish extent of one hundred and forty-five dol- 
lars. 

Our ducats went into the Shan schools to the merry tune of 
$15,675.57. The natives rolled up a help-out fund of fifty-four dollars. 
In Kakhyen, our share in the expenses was $1,200.51. The natives 
shelled out $55.20. 

At the Thatone Mission, we appear to have fished for four years 
without getting a single solitary bite. Not even a nibble. Yet we 
squandered $865.65, and we didn’t pull the heathen for one red cent. 

We Baptists are justly proud of our Karen. Whenever a Methodist 
yells “China!” at us, we holler back, “/arens/” 

Well, we turned loose $137,000 on the schools of Karens, and the 
natives uncoupled from $28,800. 

In Assam we seem to have fallen down, badly. The schools there 
cost us $50,000, and the natives came across with only $257. 

In the immense and opulent empire of China we dumped $65,000, 
teaching the youthful Chinese idea how to shoot. John co-operated to 
the conservative amount of $885. 

The Telegu schools appear to have hit us for $189,000. The natives 
halted at $701. 

In Burma we spread ourselves and got loose from $140,000 of our 
filthy stuff. The natives hoarded theirs,—excepting the unimpressive 
sum of $3,356. 


TABLE V, AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSIONARY UNION 


Showing the Subsidies paid to each Mission for Schools and Native 
Work for 1885, the Native Contributions so far as reported for the 
same year, and the Ratio of those Subsidies to the Contributions. 


Church Subsidy from . Native Contri- 
A. B. M. 


MISSION. Members butions so far 
¥. in 1885. Union. as reported. 
ISHS ETT nS OL eT oliemene wee (a ey a ee, 7,192 $ 908.00 $13,824.02 
ATC OOU MM CAMS ATOM. Ay oa eae 1s le io) Bee 4,349 1,232.50 4,003.77 
owily Ov Oeil. ICA PET ame, al ar a reat veu eS 1,104 491.67 924.51 
Efent linda icarenesete sone nae oy SP 2,476 2,679.94 3,656.80 
IBRSBeCID ME WOLINaTeN | Sree) oS ee eee eS 1,190 1,647.07 2,044.43 
Rangoon and Maoobin Pwo Karen. ~ ~ - - - - - 468 854.91 742.12 
Toungoo, Bgahi Karen_ Bap OG oe a Win ea ran meee 5 2,152.76 2,087.20 
Loungooebakuiand, hed Karenos co a0 eS) = i 2,259 2,223.91 1,534.41 
INI RUU TNE Tie TE ee A onl a oe 0 a a 1,264 1,549.14 765.06 
DR Rig EAE NS ee ae ee ee See ee SS 924 1,217.01 501.68 


Da KOTt eS 2 Cl seer Cee eek yt ir cre 2h eS eS ‘NG gt eee. 27 27.80 


[38] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


Subsidy from 
A. B. M. 


Union. 
$ 1,250.09 
712.50 


$ 17,519.41 


$ 664.00 
525.00 
3,670.94 
1,828.33 
683.77 
1,453.02 
5,223.13 
563.33 
901.71 


$ 1,670.29 
$ 4,352.68 


$ 506.10 
3,570.12 
2,917.45 


$ 6,993.67 


$ 623.38 
177.00 
3,096.49 
3,532.26 
120.16 
1,655.61 
2,294.16 
5,696.76 
2,541.09 
3,951.63 
24,712.39 
1,006.23 


$ 49,407.16 


Church 
MISSION-~Continued. Members 
cae in 1885. 
Karen Theolocicalaseminatryoa= =) see een Tae. 
Rangoon Baptist College (one-half)_ - - - - - - ee 
Totales: x": Spee Sa a a ie nee eee 23,917 
Prome;}Burmans os" 3.) ee et ee ee 237 
Henthada, .Burmamne joe. 2 he ee eae eee 87 
Rangcoen, “Burman se sat ieee Nee ee 343 
Thonezals Burm a7 2 ey ane es ee seen eg ener 375 
Toungoo, .Burmans sa estan oe ee a 25 
Zeegon?, Burman = 2 — ees eee eee ee 170 
Maulmiaings Burman: tose eee ee 282 
Bassetn,. Burman=s5 \ poo.) eae ee ees 58 
Shwaygyeen, Burman= 2 2354 2) ae 9 
TLavoy,.Burman—ik = feces See eee 10 
Rangoon Baptist College (one-half). _ ~~ — — - pes 
Totals 3c: Stee osteo See Se eee 1,596 
Shan» MissiGns=: 27s rt ee ee 35 
Japanese *Missions2e= bie ye et Se eee eee 307 
Bangkok; ‘Chinese =) Uist io ah oe eee eee eee eee 100 
Southern; China 259 =) supe ee ee ee ee 994 
Hastern: China 2 ee ee B17, 
Total s2g2 2203) ee ee a 1,411 
Sibsagor, oN ssamn glee, Soeieeces oe coe es re eee eee 200 
Tura Garon Ells 7e set oy) glares see ieee een eae eee 769 
INOWPON Gs ASSaI sae eee oanes oS eee 93 
GowahatiAssam=iy— (25 = a hee oe ene 639 
Molongy Nagata lise 5. Sin seen eee eee 25 
Wohima Nara Ei shee eens. eek ae 5 
FLOPS 2047 a ees Pk |e ee 1,731 
Secunderabads: el ou 2s ieee ee eee 109 
Hanamalond sy lel O Us mene me mee eee he gee 16 
Bapatla, ‘Telugulee <2 oe eo et 836 
Madras; Teli guises Yoo 25 tag Se aan of = ee 44 
Kurnool], sVelu oust aie ee eee hs ere emt 184 
Vanukonda Vi elirovLs, So. iy pee en eer ee ee 2.653 
Cumbum,e Pel uct so) eee Sees ee eee 4,000 
Nellore sleligw. 223-271. 0e) ieee aes Meee 479 
Nursatavapetiay telugu = ge meee te tees eae 2,807 
Ramapatam, Telugu = 4:4. ete. oye eee es 631 
Ongole ng Deli gs; 0 ho ee ee oan 14,632 
Aldayapiri, Lelupulv ic ieee eee ee aes 5 
otaless lee). See ee ee GAO G 
Grand totals “Asia i702) 2 eee a 


$100,825.44 


Native Contrj- 
butions so fa™ 
as reported. 


$30,093.80 


$ 477.52 
332.13 
1,066.71 
320.00 - 
102.24 
210.20 


$ 3,247.25 
$ 87.38 
$ 310.00 


Bo) 
a 
Or 
= 
bo 
lor) 


$ 1,171.15 


$35,293.04 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [39] 


For the whole Karen Mission, the subsidies amount on the average 
to seventy-three cents per member, the contributions to $1.26 per 
member. 

For all the Burman Missions the aggregate subsidies average 
$16.16, and the aggregate contributions $2.03 per member. 


But enough. If I have not made good the statement that we are 
giving to the heathen a thorough secular education, it would be useless 
to introduce further testimony. It would only be cumulative. 


GOSPEL PLAN OF FOREIGN MISSIONS 
(BY REV. E. LUND) 


(1.) “The apostolic evangelists needed a special preparation which 
consisted in the ‘clothing with power from on high’ previous to their 
going into ‘all the world to preach the Gospel to every creature.” See 
Luke xxiv, 46-49; Acts 1, 4, 8; 11, 43 iv, 29-381; vi, 3, 55 1x, 17; xi, 22-24; 
2 Cor. i, 19-22; 2 Tim. 1, 5-8; 1 Tim. iv, 14; Tit. i, 4; iu, 4-6. 


(2.) “The apostolic evangelists were guided as to their movements 
by the Word and the Spirit of God.” Read and compare John xiv, 26; 
Luke xxiv, 47; Acts 1, 12; ii, 4; v, 21; Acts i, 8; viii, 1,5; Mark xvi, 15; 
Acts viii, 26, 29, 39; ix, 10-18; Matt. xxviii, 19; Acts x, 19, 20; x1, 1-18; 
Acts 1, 8; xii, 4; xviii, 9, 10; Acts xiii, 46, 47; xvi, 7-10; Matt. x, 14, 28; 
Acts ix, 23-30; xii, 18-19; xiii, 51; xiv, 6, 19, 20; xvii, 5-10; xviii, 6. 


(3.) “The apostolic evangelists went from place to place, preach- 
ing the Gospel where it had not been preached, but did not settle as the 
fixed pastors of churches or as teachers of schools.” Read and compare 
Mark xvi, 15; Acts 1, 8; Rom. xv, 20, 21; 2 Cor. x, 15, 16; Acts xiii, 
Sonia ta any. OX VI. Oy 11, 129 xvii, 10.10 xvilly dl saxex, bs 2 
Pa ee ini tise t~15 % Tit.-1,)0s Acts xiv, 23. 


(4.) “As a rule, the apostolic evangelists continued their preach- 
ing in each new place, if not rejected, until there were converts or dis- 
ciples.” See Acts viii, 5, 12; x, 24, 44, 48; xi, 20, 21, 25, 26; xiii, 6, 12, 
14, 48, 52; xiv, 1, 3, 6, 21-23; xvi, 12, 15, 32-34; xvii, 1, 2, 4, 10, 12, 
(eps sVillot yh. Ss. xix, t, 8, 9,10, 18220. 


(5.) “The apostolic evangelists visited their churches to strengthen 
them in the faith and, when necessary, to help them to arrange church 
matters.” See Acts xiv, 21, 22; xv, 36, 41; xvi, 4,53 xviil, 22, 23; xix, 21, 
Ole set toxxtad-O cc lOph, y1,225 Phils 1,19) 28°29: Coliv, Beek 
(ihiessaur, 2raActoxiv.23<: lo Tim.t,.3 32. Timea,. 2s ITim, i, 2:1: Cor: 
Iv, 16-21; Tit. 1, 5, 


[40] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


(6.) “The apostolic workers began their preaching with ‘repent- 
ance and forgiveness of sin in the name of Jesus Christ.” See Luke 
Kxiv, 47; Matt. 111, 2;iv; 17; Marka, 16 yi5d2; Luke Xill,, BOs 
10; Acts ii, 88; 111, 19; xvii, 30; xi, 18; xx,/21; xxvi, 20. 


(7.) “The apostolic workers taught inquirers ‘the way of God more 
perfectly.” Compare Matt. xi, 25; Acts 11, 37-41; vill, 27-38; xvi, 
30-33; Matt. xx, 17-19; Acts 18, 24-26; xix, 1-7; Mark iv, 10, 11; Acts 
x, 21-48; Matt. xxviii, 19, 20; Acts xx, 20; xxviii, 30, 31. 


(8.) “Zhe apostolic evangelists baptized believers as Christ had 
commanded.” See Mark xvi, 15, 16; Acts 11, 37-41; viii, 12, 35-38; ix, 
1-18; x, 44-48; xvi, 18-15, 29-84; xviii, 4-8; 1 Cor. 1, 16; xvi, 15; Acts 
xix, 1-7; Rom. vi, 4; John i111, 23; Matt. i111, 16. 


(9.) “They organized local churches with baptized converts only.” 
Read and compare 1 Cor. 1, 2, 18; Gal. f, 1-5; ili, 25-27; Eph. 1° Stix, 
5; v, 263 Col. 1,1; 11, 125; Rom. 1,7; vi, 3, 5; 1 Peteraylg2: aie oie 
ii, 41. 


(10.) “Lhe apostolic evangelist ‘appointed elders in every church.” 
See Acts xiv, 23; Tit. 1, 5; Acts xx, 17, 28; Phil. i, 1; compare 2 Cor. 
vill, 18,19; Acts vi; 2-6; also 2 Tim. iv, 5341, 2240iten oo: 


(11.) “On their departure from such recently organized churches 
the apostolic evangelists ‘commended them to the Lord’ to ‘receive edi- 
fying’ and ‘be builded up’ by means of Spiritual ‘gifts, divided to each 
one of the members ‘according to the measure of the gift of Christ?” 
See Acts xiv, 23; xx, 32; 1 Cor. xii, xili, xiv; Rom. xii, 3-8; 1 Peter iv, 
10, 11; Eph. iv, 7-16; v, 18-20; Col. iii, 16. 


(12.) “The apostolic evangelists commended the churches to the 
Lord, not only to ‘receive edifying’ but to be aggressive continuers of 
the work they had begun, ‘showing forth the excellencies of Him who 
had called them out of the darkness unto his marvelous light?” Com- 
pare 1 Thess. 11, 10-12; i, 6-8; iv, 1, 2; Phil. i, 6-8, 14, 27, 28; Eph. vi, 
11-20; 1 Peter iii, 15-17; Col. iv, 5, 6; 1 Peter ii, 9; iii; 1, 2; Jude 91; 
1 John v, 5; Eph.v, 8; Phil. ii, 15, 16; 1 Peter ii, 12,15; Matti, PeeiG 


(13.) “Dhey left their churches under Christ, as the head, to work 
and develop as independent, self-supporting and self-governing insti- 
tutions, sustaining a relation of equality and fraternity both between 
the members of each individual church and between the different 
churches in general.” See Eph. 1, 22, 23; iv, 15, 163'v,.23; Rev, irene 
2 Thess. iii, 10-13; 1 Thess. iv, 11, 12: Eph. iv, 28; Acts xx, 35; Matt. 
Xvi, 17; 1 Cor: v, 1-13 :'2 Cor ii, 6° 2 Thess: 11. 6, 14; Acts ix, 26-28; 
Rom. xiv, 1; Acts i, 15-26; vi, 3-5; xiv, 23; 2 Cor. vii, 18, 19: Acts Xi, 
22; xill, 1-4; xv, 22, 25; Matt. xxiii, 8: Gal. iii, 26-29 5:1 ‘Tim. vi, 231 
Peter ii, 9; Acts xi, 29, 30; Gal. ii, 10; 2 Cor. viii, ix, 


Ke 


Cee a 


> 
- 


% 


* 


THE HARADA MURA KINDERGARTEN. 


[42] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


CHAPTER III. 


HY do boys run off from 

home to join the army, or 

go to sea? Because it 
appeals to their imagination. To 
put the plow-gear on old Mike, 
the mule, and go to the field 
where the steady feet must walk one 
monotonous furrow after another, 
with loose soil getting into the shoes 
and the hot sun baking the head, 
is honorable but not romantic. Now and then the ploughman may be 
a Burns and see the poetry in the upturned clod, moralize over the 
ruined home of the field mouse, and bewail the cruel fate of the moun- 
tain daisy crushed by the ruthless coulter, but oftener the conductor 
who pulls the bell-line over Mike is not sentimental: he finds that life 
at the tail-end of a mortgaged mule is strictly prosaic. 

But to run away and join the army! To slip off some night and go 
to sea! Zhere’s novelty for you, and romance and adventure. The 
imagination kindles at the thought, fancy paints such a career in colors 
of uniform brightness, and there they go, the Peter Simples and Barry 
Lyndons and all their intermediate types,—to learn in due time that it 
might have answered quite as well to have stayed at home. 

Something of the same feeling tempts men and women into For- 
eign Missions. The Orient, especially, appeals to the imagination. The 
East,—the venerable, mysterious, poet-sung East,—revives recollections 
of the cradle of the race, the dead civilizations of a remote past, the 
legends of Patriarchs and Apostles, the traditions of conquerors and 
empire-builders, the fabulous stories of boundless wealth, ancient rivers 
whose names are interwoven with the mightiest events of time, hoary 
cities and monuments and ruins that reach back into the twilight of 
history; and languages, customs, manners, beliefs that link one to the 
very beginnings of things. 7Z'hese create a profound interest in the 
human heart, cast a spell over the mind, and attract us to the East with 
that nameless charm which has fascinated men of all classes since the 
time of Alexander the Great. The soldier, the mariner, the merchant, 
the scholar, the naturalist, the scientist, the tourist, the poet, the law- 
giver, ‘the historian, all have been captives to the Orient,—the East 
from whose womb have issued the peoples, the ideas, the religions and 
the laws, the arts and the sciences which have dominated the world. 

Is it any wonder, then, that the Western churches should fall un- 
der the witchery of the East? Is it any wonder that the enthusiastic 
young evangelist should burn and glow at the very thought of planting 
the banner of Christ on the walls of Teheran, of Soochow, of Tokio, of 
Benares? By no means. On the contrary, he would be a dullard in- 
deed if his imagination were not fired by the prospect. 


AMERICAN MINER’S CABIN. 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [43] 


To toil among the miserably poor and ignorant whites of Arkansas, 
or Kentucky or Tennessee or Georgia is not romantic. There is noth- 
ing poetic about their rags, their dirt, their mental and physical stunt- 
edness. Waving, as so many of them do, in wretched cabins, in direst 
poverty, neglected of man and aliens from God, their surroundings are 
not only filthy, but repulsive. Missionaries are loath to take hold and 
have a general cleaning up. But with the Orientals, how different it 
is! Somehow, thei dirt and comprehensive nastiness does not repel. 


A MOUNTAIN HOME NEAR TALLULAH FALLS, GEORGIA. 


Our delicate women work on those foul Orientals, and clean them up, 
as though each reeking heathen hag and vagabond were a rare antique 
vase which it is a pleasure to wash. 


READ THIS ENTHUSIASTIC DESCRIPTION 


“And what a scene was that when nearly twenty-five hundred sat down to eat 
together the Lord’s Supper, and what a gathering! The old, the decrepit, the lame, 
the blind, the maimed, the withered, the paralytic, and those afflicted with divers dis- 
eases and torments; those with eyes, noses, lips, and linbs consumed with the fire of 
their own or their parents’ former lusts, with features distorted and figures the most 
depraved and loathsome; and these came hobbling upon their staves, and led or borne 
by their friends; and among this throng the hoary priests of idolatory, with hands 
but recently washed from the blood of human victims, together with the thief, the 
adulterer, the sodomite, the sorcerer, the robber, the murderer, and the mother—no, 
the monster—whose hands had reeked in the blood of her own children. These all 
met before the Cross of Christ, with their enmity slain and themselves washed and 
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” 


' 


The missionary who exhibits these trophies, these cleaned-up bar- 
barians, appears to have been prouder of his harvest than if he had in- 
vaded the tenderloin of some American city and rescued Caucasian 
_slave-girls from a fate that is worse than death. 


[44] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


In the book, “Mission Economics”, by Rev. C. H. Carpenter, some 
very valuable information is to be found. 

On page 105, we are told that one out of every ee or ten of the 
heathen “converts” is hired to preach to his own countrymen; and that 
in Maulmain the missionaries maintained a boarding-school for boys 
and girls, and a theological seminary, in which the heathen pupils were 
furnished with food, clothing, beds, books, stationery, lights, etc., in 
addition to the teachers and the buildings. Page 119: “We were told in 
China that some missions were accustomed to pay parents for the time 
their children spent in the mission school.” Page 177: Speaking of the 
students in the preparatory school at Ongole, India, the lady teacher 
said concerning ninety-one out of the one eunibed and twenty- -seven 
scholars: “They receive food, clothes, and books from the mission.” 


BOYS’ SCHOOL, PERNAMBUCO. 


As to the High-school, Dr. Clough reports: “J/ost of the boys are un- 
able to supply their own clothes or to pay board or tuttion.” 


Further, Mr. Carpenter says: 


“The pupils have mostly to come from a distance, where the prices of provisions 
of all kinds are extraordinarily high, and where the native -churches can not or will 
not aid with a single basket of paddy, or a stick of fuel, without receiving city 
prices.” 


The reference here was to the school at Maulmain, where the na- 
tives would furnish nothing and where everything,—house, furniture, 
beds and bedding, food and clothing, light and fuel, books and tuition 
—had to be drummed up among the Baptist congregations of our own 
country. 


Says Brother Carpenter: 


“To assist in the education of a native ministry, and to give some aid to con- 
verts who are striving, as to the extent of their means, to educate their children, is 
one thing. To go beyond this, and make expensive provision for the education of 
children and youth, the large majority of whom are from heathen families whose 
parents will not accept Christianity for themselves, and are presumably opposed to 
having their children accept it; to buy land, erect buildings, provide costly American 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [45] 


teachers and native assistants, FURNISH FOOD AND ALL THE APPLIANCES OF 
A NATIVE BOARDING-DEPARTMENT, and then receive back from some of the 
pupils @ tuition of ten, twenty, or forty cents a month, and from some others a dol- 
lar or two a month, towards the cost of the food which they eat,—to expend so many 
thousands of dollars in this way, I say, that we are unable to send out the men who 
are needed to enter open doors for preaching the Gospel in the regions beyond, may 
not be absolute waste, but it can not be the highest form of obedience to the last com- 
mand of our Lord.” 


Reader, what think you of an intemperate, choleric parson who 
would publish me as a liar for saying that conditions were as above 


These are American breaker-boys. all supposed to be over fourteen. They work in the Johnston 
breaker at Olyphant, the building that towers behind them. There they sit on narrow boards laid 
across the coal chutes, enveloped in gloom, grime and clouds of stifling black dust, eight or nine hours 
a day, bending over the streams of coal that rush between their little feet to pick, with bleeding fingers, 
the useless slate and rock from the precious anthracite that may keep you warm next winter. Four- 
teen, at least, the breaker boys are supposed to be. Often, however, they begin their drudgery when 
no more than nine or ten years of age. ; 


described, when the official reports of the churches, and the books writ- 
ten by missionaries themselves, reveal such unscriptural methods? 
Naturally wishing to know how it is now, with the educational sys- 
tem of the Baptist’ Foreign Missionaries, I examined the Annual Re- 
port, for 1908, of the Southern Baptist Convention. To my disap- 
pointment, I find no detailed information which enables me to say to 


[46] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


what extent we are still furnishing food, clothing, books, ete., to the 
heathen children. Application was made to our esteemed friend, Rev. 
Dr. Lansing Burrows, Secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention ; 
but he writes that he can only refer us to the Report. It is “the only 
source of information.” That’s a pity. The Baptists of the South, 
and elsewhere, have the right to know whether they are now, as here- 
tofore, being taxed to lodge, feed, clothe and educate the black, brown 
and yellow children of heathendom, while so many millions of white 
children of our home-land are not well lodged, not well fed, clothed 
and educated, and not given the precious benefit of refined, Christian 
training. 

We hope that some Baptist delegate to the next Convention will 
have the spunk to demand more light. .Let them give us the details— 
or quit pulling us for money. 

Glancing through the reports sent in from the foreign field, one can 
manage to glean a fact, now and then. Remember that in writing to 
the Home Church, the missionary is personally interested in making 
the best possible showing. If he could not “report progress”, he might 
get his head chopped off—or have his salary stopped, which is about 
as bad. Therefore, when you settle down to peruse these Reports from 
the foreign field, put the salt cellar within reach. 

Page 173. Report to Southern Baptist Convention on Cheng Chow 
Station, China: “At the boarding-school started last fall by the Mis- 
sion the girls paid a part of their board.” Don’t you think they might 
have told how much it costs to lodge and feed these little yellow girls, 
and what part of the expense their parents paid? Particularly, as we 
Baptists in the home-land are taxed to give these heathen girls free 
books, free tuition and a good schoolhouse. 

At the end of the report on this Cheng Chow Mission is a list of 
the “needs” of the missionaries which home Baptists are expected to 
supply. ; 

Cheng Chow needs: ‘Two unmarried ladies in addition to those 
they already have; also a doctor and wife to help with the medical 
‘work; also $2,500 in cash to buy land and a house for Mr. and Mrs. 
Sallee, who have surrendered the house which the church built for 
them to Mr. Herring and his family. They also need $1,000 for buy- 
ing land for hospital, girls’ and boys’ schools. Also $3,000 for the 
girls’ school; likewise $2,500 for the hospital. 

For one station, that would seem to be a robust list of immediate 
needs, especially when we consider that Cheng Chow is a small city for 
China, having only about 20,000 inhabitants. 

The medical work of the Southern China Mission is summarized as 
follows: 


Out patients treated during the year__________________ 7,543 
Out calls 2225 utL- ek ek So ee ee 131 
In“ patients £22csse3 2 oe ee ee ae a ee eee ee 207 
Major ~ operations: {32 e722 e a a ee eee 51 
Minor, operations =..5.2) tee ee ee oe ee 320 


Receipts from” fees Sons eg se ee 


Bo] 
aS 
or 
or 
to 
— 
— 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [47] 


According to this showing, the Baptists of the Home Church sup- 
plied medicines, medical service, surgical operations, and surgical in- 
struments necessary for use therein at the nominal rate of 20 cents for 
each Chinaman who was treated. 

Of course, this medical work is done upon the theory that it aids 
the missionaries in the evangelization of these pagans. The report, 
however, claims only twenty-one Chinamen baptized as a direct result 
of the hospital work. Conceding that each one of these twenty-one 
converts became a true Christian because of the medical work, it would 
seem that the year’s harvest bears a very discouraging proportion to 
the work and money expended. The same investment might have 


MISSIONARY RESIDENCES, SHANGHAI, CHINA, BAPTIST COLLEGE AND 
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 


yielded very much better results had it been made in the slums of one 
of our great cities, or in one of our backward rural communities. 


From “the Uplift of China”, by Arthur H. Smith, this extract is 
taken from page 175 


“Asylums or villages for lepers have been established in five different provinces, 
where excellent work has been done. There are eight orphanages (one of them in 
Hongkong, but conducted by missionaries to the Chinese) caring for a great number 
of children—mostly girls. Eleven schools or asylums for the blind—the best known 
being that of Mr. Murray in Peking—are working what the Chinese justly regard as 
daily miracles, rescuing from uselessness and worse a class hitherto quite hopeless. 
A school for deat-mutes, conducted by Mrs. Mills, in Chefoo, is an object-lesson in 
what may be done in that wide field. An asylum for the insane begun under great 
difficulties by the late Dr. J. G. Kerr, at Canton, is likewise a pioneer in caring for a 
numerous but hitherto neglected class.” 


[48] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


The list of needs is appended, as usual, at the end of the report, and 
it appears that in the Southern China Mission they need pretty much 
the same that they do at Cheng Chow: More teachers, more doctors, 
more money for building missionary residences, more money for 
schoolhouses and for chapels. 

If I understand the statistical table which appears on page 20 of 
the Report of the Southern Baptist Convention, we are maintaining in 
the foreign field: 

98 Male missionaries, 

124 Female missionaries, 

85 Ordained native preachers, 

198 Un-ordained native male workers, 
51 Native female workers, 

139 Churches, 

226 Sunday schools, with 7,526 children in attendance, 

128 Day schools, with 3,194 scholars. 

To the support of all these, foreign countries contribute somewhat 
less than $3,500. To say nothing of maintaining the expensive home 
machinery of administering these mission funds and directing the mis- 
sion work, we actually spend in the field, among the heathen, about ten 
times more than they themselves can be prevailed upon to contribute. 

Reporting to the Mission Board of the M. E. Church, South, on 
Education in Korea, Rev. G. W. Cram says: 


“It was thought wise to make the students pay the nominal monthly tuition of 
ten sen (five cents), which most of the schools in Songdo charge their pupils. The 
parents of some of the boys contributed yen 98 in the beginning of the fall term to 
get benches, desks, coal, stove, etc., for the school. During the spring term the tui- 
tion collected amounted to only yen 20.60 ($10), owing to “the fact that many of the 
boys were unable to pay, while some were unwilling to pay, even that modest sum. 
We decided to use the twenty yen as remuneration for the service of the two student 
tutors.” . 

(A yen is, in our coin, about 49 cents: 1 sen is, therefore, about 
half-a-cent.) 

There were more than a hundred boys in the school, and the teach- 
ers were Mr. Cram, Mrs. Wasson, Mr. Wasson, three Korean teachers, 
and two student tutors. Not only did the Home Church of America 
have to pay the salaries of these six regular teachers, and supply the 
books, ete., but Mr. Cram reports that eight of these Korean students 
had to be furnished with BOARD, in whole or in part. 

Page 53: Referring to the Union Intermediate School, Mr. C. G. 
Hounshell reports ninety students, of whom eleven are boarded at the 
expense of the Methodist Church. 

Page 71: Palmore Institute: Number of students enrolled about 
500. The Principal of the school says that “very few of the great num- 
ber of pupils that come to us are Christians”. The receipts are given 
as $706, whereas the total expense of the school foots up $2,000. 

In fact, it elsewhere appears in the Report that the J aps contribute 
only $3,927 to help the Methodists sustain fifteen school buildings, 
thirteen church buildings, six parsonages, twenty-three missionaries, 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [49] 


fourteen native workers, twenty-four local preachers, sixty-two Sun- 
day-schools, three boarding-schools, seven day-schools, forty-eight 
teachers, and one thousand, eight hundred and twelve pupils. 

Let us take the Laurens Institute, one of the schools in the Mexican 
field. Prof. F. C. Campbell, Director, reports the recent completion of 
an enlargement of the building at a cost of $24,390. The homeland 
furnished the money. The professor says, ‘While holding rigidly to 
our policy not to exclude any worthy pupil on account of 7VAB/L- 
ITY TO PAY, we have put forth every effort to make the school more 
nearly self-supporting 7ZAN HERETOFORE.” Curious to know 
how close they came to making the Laurens Institute self-supporting, 
after they had “put forth every effort” to that end, we looked it up in 


“Breaker’’ boys and other tiny miners in Pennsylvania. Many are under fourteen years, 
althoughthe law forbids employment of children under this age in mines. 


the Report, and we find that $2,750 was the amount which “the Board 
of Missions” appropriated to this Mexican college for the year 1908-09. 
If it hits the brethren for that amount when it is more nearly self-sup- 
porting than heretofore, what an elephant it must formerly have been! 

Reporting on the Granbery College, Brazil, President J. W. Tar- 
boux demands of the Home Church $25,000 for an extension of the 
present building; $10,000 for additional furniture and scientific appa- 
ratus; $40,000 for a chapel, literary society and Y. M. C. A. halls; 
$35,000 for a Pharmacy and Dental school; and $30,000 for more land 
to build on and for the students to play on. 

Says Bro. Tarboux: 


“The (home) Church ought to drive down her stakes for $150,000 for the Gran- 
bery within the next five years.” 


[50] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


A Protestant missionary in Mexico (not a Baptist) writes as fol- 
lows: 

“ * * * Tam disposed to help in putting thé set in the hands of every Prot- 
estant missionary in Mexico. . . In : } —, and ———— we were 
saddened by much that we saw: native preachers receiving seventy-five and eighty 
dollars per month, while their congregations contributed nothing to their support; 
boarding-schools or orphanages, in which the girls received everything 5 theological 
training schools, in which boys and young men received hats, shoes, clothing, station- 
ery, postage-stamps, money for bath and hair-cutting, and a small monthly present 
in cash, besides board and tuition. One lady teacher, weighed down with business 
details, etc., remarked that she was really doing more missionary work when she 
lived at home in the United States.” 


This letter appears in the book, “Mission Economics”, by the Mis- 
sionary, Rev. Dr. Carpenter. 

In studying the Mexican Missions, we find that our Baptist mis- 
sionaries are establishing free literary schools and free doctor-shops. 
For instance, on page 133 
of the Southern Baptist 
Convention Report, we find 
a letter from the Toluce 
Field. Brother Lacey says, 
“Foundation work is being 
done at these places and 
we may expect baptisms 
later.” 

Now, what 7s this “foun- 
dation work” which is be- 
ing done antecedent to con- 
versions? It is a complete 
system of literary educa- 
tion, furnished free to the Mexican children. Brother F. N. Sanders, 
from the same field, writes: 


A BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAIN HOME. 
COURTESY BEREA (KyY.) COLLEGE. 


\ 
“I taught mathematics, ENGLISH, some science, GYMNASTICS, and gave a few 
of the boys MUSIC.” 


And this is Foreign Missions, is it? That’s what Christ told us to 
do, eh? We go about among the congregations of the South begging 
for money for the heathen, and when we get it, we hike off down to 
Mexico to teach English to people who are perfectly satisfied with 
their Spanish language; and we not only spend this mission money 
teaching the boys how to skin-the-cat on the gymnastic pole, but we 
solemnly teach them to bang the piano, toot the flute, and tweedle-dee 
on the fiddle! 

To soften the tale, Brother G. H. Lacey assures us that in this 
“foundation-work” schools, there “were considerable numbers of pay 
girls, which was a great help in the matter of expenses”, 

What was the number of these “pay girls”? The Report fails to 
state. How much did that free education of Mexicans cost us? We 
are not told. We have no native Baptist workers in that field, but in 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [51] 


the hopes of getting a few, “bymeby”, we shell out cash to furnish the 
Mexican children with a literary, gymnastic and musical education,— 
and it would seem that we board and lodge them while teaching them. 
They tell us that the Bible is authority for that kind of thing! Can 
you draw a mental picture’ of Paul and Peter putting up a gymnastic 
pole, at Philippi or Antioch, as an 
antecedent to evangelistic work? 
Can you imagine Barnabas and 
Timothy carrying a_ fiddle-case 
around, as a part of the apostolic 
outfit ? 

What’s the matter with us 
Baptists, anyway? Have we gone 
crazy, or have we just simply 

-been hypnotized by the unscrip- 
tural methods of other churches ? 


DISPENSARY AT CHOON CHUN, KOREA. The Rev. John Hobbs has re- 

cently been run out of Mexico. He 
was engaged in missionary work for the Seventh Day Adventists who, 
as it seems to me, have just as much right to free speech and a fair 
chance as any other denomination. Speaking of the hardships to which 
he was subjected in Mexico because of his evangelical efforts, Brother 
Hobbs says: 

“In Mexico even Protestant missionaries persecuted us. The American mission- 
ary receiving $100 to $150 in gold each month, pays his native helper, who does 
most of the work, only $25 a month and then expects ‘him to support a family. Our 
faith is most widely received by the Mexicans of all the other religious beliefs being 
taught there by missionaries. 

“Three years ago I left Winnipeg, Canada, for Mexico, as all members of our 
ehurch have to spend three years in some kind of missionary work, and that, too, 
without support from the denomination except from the individual church to which 
they belong in case of dire need, such as sickness. 

“We differ in our belief from the Baptists in that we believe in feet washing be- 
fore communion and in close communion always, as well as in faith healing. 

“If the Protestant missionaries’ lives were more worthy of emulation, the Mexi- 
cans would flock to their religion the more quickly.” 


Take Africa, as an illustration. We know what we are paying to- 
ward the education of our negroes in the South, but what are we doing 
for the negroes in Africa ? 

As yet, we have but made a beginning. But don’t fret: just give 
us time. After awhile we will be stuck on the job of making a scholar 
and a gentleman out of every nigger boy in Africa, just as we are do- 
ing over here. In Africa, we Baptists have already planted our 
schools, and we are giving our brother in black a free education over 
there, just as we are doing over here. What are we teaching the ne- 
groes in Africa? I quote from the Southern Baptist Convention Re- 
port, page 147: 

“Subjects taught are reading and spelling, in both English and Goruba, writing, 
arithmetic, geometry and grammar.” 


[52] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


On page 148: 

“Industrial work. This is the most recent department of our mission work and 
consists in combining with other branches of mission work the teaching of certain 
trades, such as carpenter-work, blacksmithing, FARMING, and especially modern 
methods of farming.” 

So we Baptists have allowed our foreign missionaries to saddle and 
bridle us with Industrial Schools, in addition to literary education. 
We are supporting missionaries who are not only teaching negro boys 
and girls in Africa how to speak, read and write in English, and how 
to express themselves grammatically, and how to do sums and solve 
problems in lower, intermediate and higher mathematics, but our 
preachers are training the 
African mind in the mys- 
teries of the jack-plane, 
the turning lathe, the 
merry forge, the sulky 
plow, and the grain-drill. 
That is all well enough as 
a matter of brood philan- 
thropy, but how does it 
avork itself into the ex- 
pense account of Foreign 
Missions? Does it any- 
where appear that Christ 
commanded us to go into 
all the world and teach 
the heathen how to plant 
potatoes, sow wheat and 
raise cotton? Are we Bap- 
apo ce etn of ee eae Ac erleas Sat Ero ena et 
bef by Serco eters! t cotton mill. The eldesthasbeen {he expense of educational 

and industrial training of 
the negroes in both the worlds, the New and the Old? 

In Africa, as elsewhere, the doctor-shop cuts a wide swathe. Sick 
people love to be cured, and American medicines and methods are so 
much better than those of the natives that even the Africans recognize 
their superiority. On page 146 of the Southern Baptist Convention 
Report one finds a statement of the Medical work. Three days of the 
week the Doctor-shop opens for business. The ailing negroes come 
flocking, grunting, groaning, howling—some with one complaint and 
some with another, but all with “a misery”, somewhere. The “free 


cure” empties the woods, and crowds the Doctor-shop. Says the Re- 
port: 


“From March till December, 2,150 patients have received treatment. ee 
During the latter part of the year we began to think that the people should be taught 
to help themselves to some degree, and that instead of treating all patients absolutely 
free, a small charge should be made for medicines and surgical dressings, and thus 
render the medical work partly self-supporting.” 


. 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [53] 


Now, weigh those facts. The free Doctor-shop was established and 
operated until more than 2,000 negroes had been given free treatment, 
free medicines, and free surgical dressings. Then a small charge was 
demanded, to meet 7n part the actual cost of medicines and surgical 
dressings. But it is not even proposed to charge a cent for the medical 
service. 

These beneficiaries of our bounty are not converts. The Report does 
not claim that a single patient embraced Christianity. We sent them 
good medicines, good doctors and good surgeons: the negroes accepted 


GROUP OF MISSIONARIES AND NATIVE WORKERS. 


Soudan Mission Christian and Missionary Alliance. John Nicol, Bros. Rapp, Mim, Evans, Patterson 
and David Smart; Mrs. Graham, Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Driscoll. 


what we offered. A brief religious service preceded the work of the 
Medical Missionary, but that part of his labor seems to have been bar- 
ren of results. 

From the book, “What Hath God Wrought?” we take a picture of 
a group of missionaries at work in the Congo Free State, Africa. 
Study the group. - The most prominent figure in the photograph is that 
of a well-made negro, who looks like he might easily split five hundred 
rails a day. He is dressed elegantly in white linen or duck. He ap- 
pears to be posing on a footing of social equality with the white ladies 
and gentlemen of the group,—as does the coon who stands on the other 
side. How much does it cost us to dress up these Africans and put 
them tothe work which the negro so dearly loves,—that of preaching ? 
The report fails to state. 


[54] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


Go Forward is the name of a paper published by the M. E. Church, 
South, at Nashville, Tenn. It seems to have no other reason for exist- 
ence than to continuously beat the drum for Foreign Missions. Every 
copy of it is crammed w ith letters from the workers who are wrestling 
with the heathen in various parts of the world. According to the Re- 
port of the Conference, Go Forward cost the brethren the sum of 
$2,600 last year. In other words, our Southern Methodists are subsi- 
dizing a periodical whose sole aim_is to pull money out of their pock- 
ets for Foreign Missions. q 

The letters which are published in Go Forward are written with 
no other object in view than to stimulate contributions to the cause. 
Therefore, all of those communications are colored as highly as pos- 
sible. If Go Forward gives space to any statement which tends to make 
the present system lose favor, such a result was not contemplated by 
the missionary who wrote the letter or the editor who published it. 

Bearing this in mind, let us browse around among some back num- 
bers of the paper and note what the foreign workers are saying for 
themselves. Let us see what they have done and are doing. Let us 
see what they are proposing for the future and what they are asking 
of us home-folks. 

First of all, consider the point of view of the fanatics who are 
proposing to cleanse, cure, educate and Christianize the teeming mil- 
lions of heathendom. This point of view has never been more boldly 
stated than by Dr. J. S. French,—a very able, eloquent and popular 
Methodist minister. In his fine sermon before the South Atlantic 
Missionary Conference in 1905, Dr. French takes the “position that a 
member of the church has no private and personal property at all. 
What such member works for and seems to accumulate is a mere trust 
fund which the Christian holds as Trustee. The estate does not belong 
to the industrious and fortunate member; it belongs to God. This 
estate must be administered as a trust fund for the Almighty. The 
Christian who appears to own it, but does not, must apply it to re- 
ligious work. And who will tell him the proper uses of this trust fund ? 
Wi hy the Church, of course. And who voices the will of the Church? 
W hy, the preacher,—who else? 

All the property we church members appear to have earned and 
made ours must be held as God’s, and the ministers of the Gospel will 
tell us what God wants us to do with it. The priest, you know, is 
authorized to speak for God in all matters and at all times,—particu- 
larly in money matters. Dr. French scouts the idea that the Church 
must be content with Tithes. One-tenth isn’t enough. Says the 
Doctor: 


“Whatever may be in our possession is only held in trust for our Lord. It is 
His, to be used whenever and wherever necessity demands. I do not believe in set- 
ting apart one-tenth or one-fourth as God’s part of our income, and counting that the 
balance belongs to us. There isn’t any of it ours.” 


For good, *stalwart, thorough-going clericalism,—can* you beat 
that? 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [55] 


Elsewhere in his remarkable sermon, Dr. French alludes to the 
property of Christians as a loan which God has made “on call,” and 
which must not be withheld when payment is demanded. Does Jeho- 
vah tell us when the time is up on these call loans?) Yes—through the 
preachers. They, it would seem, are the authorized brokers who can 
always be relied on to know exactly what God wants, in all cases— 
particularly money matters. . 

This being the point of view of those who establish and support 
such one-sided papers as Go Forward, we ¢an not marvel when we 
read its editorial demand for $75,000,000 per year for the distant 
heathen. 

“More money! more money!” is the ery all along the line. They 
must have grand churches which in splendor will rival heathen tem- 


THE COLES MEMORIAL HIGH SCHOOL, SOUTH INDIA. 


ples: magnificent school-buildings which will compete with the govern- 
ment schools of foreign kingdoms; boarding establishments for pauper 
pupils; harbors of refuge for lepers; asylums for the orphans, the deaf, 
the blind, the insane; kindergartens for the tots; girls’ schools where 
the young women are lodged until they can marry; free medicines, free 
surgical operations, free treatment for tens of thousands of the sick; 
free industrial. training and, very commonly, free provisions and 
clothing; and, for the heathen convert: who will pretend to enter 
evangelistic work among his own people, liberal pay in hard cash. 

You who assemble yourselves together in a plain wooden meeting- 
house to hearken to the “Missionary Sermon” might do well to ponder 
upon such items as this in Go Forward: 


[56] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


“The most pressing demands of our Japan Mission in the way of buildings are a 
chureh in West Osaka, a church in Kyoto, a chapel at the Kwansei Gakuin in Kobe, 
and a large, central house of worship in Hiroshima. It will take at least $9,000 for 
cach of these enterprises. We can not hope to intrench Methodism in these great cen- 
ters by renting halls on back streets and alleys, as we have been doing.” 


Five thousand dollars apiece for churches in Japan, or no chance 
for Methodism ! 

I wonder whether John Wesley ever dreamed that Aes Church 
would come to such a point of view as that? No fine church,—no 
converted Jap! We come upon the same situation in China, in Hin- 
dustan, in continental Europe, in Mexico, and in South America. The 
sum and substance of the missionary demand is “beautiful and costly 
buildings, or we can’t do business.” 

Usually, the missionary is lucky enough to know to a dollar what 
the Lord wants at that particular station; and usually the missionary 


LUCY CUNINGGIM SCHOOL, WONSAN, KOREA. 


makes a written demand for the money,—accompanying the requisi- 
tion with the warning that great harm will happen to the cause if the 
spondulix is not immediately forthcoming. 

The vigor and habituality with which the missionary digs this 
spur into the quickening flanks of the Home Church is as noticeable as 
the optimism with which the missionary promises glorious results if 
the filthy lucre is expeditiously collected and remitted. 

For instance, there was the letter of Sister T. W. B. Demaree: 

“The eyes of the world are on Japan. The Lord is at work on the hearts of these 


people. . . . There is not a moment to lose. Today is the day of salvation in 
Japan. Not a Christian but can help in this great work. We want your money.” 


The same issue of Go Forward that contained Sister Demaree’s 
letter published one from China in which $20,000 was demanded for a 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [57 | 


new dormitory; also money to erect new residences for teachers. Pra 
tically every number of Go Forward contains an urgent call ft 
some expensive structure in some foreign country, Bithe money, of 
course, to be drummed up among the Methodists of the South. Just 
how many millions of dollars have already been sent abroad for this 
purpose it would be hard to say, and the demands for larger outlays 
are growing wonderfully. 

While this article was being prepared, the following item appeared 
in the press dispatches: 


“Tokio, May 19.—A dispatch from Seoul states that S. A. Moon, the American 
Consul-General there, yesterday laid the cornerstone of the Holton Institute for Girls 
at Songdo. The institute, which was built at a cost of $15,000, is the gift of the 
women ae: the Methodist Church, South, of America.” 


No statement of mine has 
provoked more wrathful de- 
nials than that heathen con- 
verts often lose their’ zeal 
when the missionaries cut off 
the subsidies. The names of 
the missionaries who had said 
things to that effect were de- 
manded. These ministers are 
yet living, actively engaged in 
church work, and it might 

A BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAIN SCHOOL. prove embarrassing to them to 

disclose their identity. But I 

have at hand evidence of the same nature, furnished by workers in the 

mission field who became so disgusted with the system which I am as- 

sailing that they published the facts and their criticisms of the system. 
Rev. N. Sites (Methodist) writing of Foochow: 


“*No foreign dollars, no work for Jesus’, is the motto of some. In Foochow the 
first Methodist class-leader refused to hold office longer, when he learned that there 


was to be no pay.” 


The missionary, Dr. Carpenter, distinctly states that the subsidiz- 
ing of the native converts demoralizes them and retards the progress of 
genuine evangelical work. He cites instances and gives names, 3us- 
taining the truth of what I have said in regard to the slackening of the 
zeal of the “converts” when they are dropped from the pay-roll. (See 
page 94 et seq. of “Mission Economics.”) 

* Says Rev. R. G. Wilder: 


“In our life-work in India, we became so deeply impressed with the serious hin- 
drance to the progress of vital Christianity, resulting from the too free use of money 
in mission work, that we have been led to much and of equent thought, and to a care- 
ful study of the subject in all its bearings. We have seen a mission, after making 
fair progress till its converts were reckoned by hundreds, and more than twenty per 
cent. of them in mission pay, then remain almost stationary for years, scarcely 
enough being added to make up the loss. We have also seen these native helpers and 


abs 


[58] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


preachers bring to their missionaries frequent and importunate petitions for higher 
salaries; and, when refused, showing disaffection and wrong feeling enough to more 
than negative any good results of their formal preaching and service ; some became 
quite heartless. We have noticed in such mission, that when a private Christian, not 
in mission pay, is reminded of his or her duty and privilege to speak to neighbors or 
friends, and try to win them to Christ, the ready reply has been, ‘Why should I do 
that? What pay does the mission give me?? SHOWING THE MERCENARY CHAR- 
ACTER OF THE WHOLE WORK IN THE VIEW OF SUCH NATIVE OHRIST- 
IANS.” . 


Rev. T. P. Crawford writes: 


“So long as missionaries do everything for the natives or pay for what they do, 
so long will they have churches of parasites; and so long will the better, or moré 


HIROSHIMA MISSION GIRL’S “SUNSHINE SOCIETY”. 


honorable classes, stand aloof from them. Those members of such churches who are 
really born again, are, as Dr. Gulick said of the Italian converts, ‘born paralyzed.’ ” 


Dr. M. T. Yates testifies: 


“I have, after patient and prayerful consideration of the whole subject, come to 
the conclusion that the free use of foreign money in connection with mission works— 
such as, in the employment of native agents, in schemes for the education of heathen 
young men and women in the English, the sciences and the Chinese classical litera- 
ture in order that they may be better prepared for such agency if they become Christ- 
ians while in school—is the bane, yea, the dry rot, of modern missions.” 


Rey. A. McKenna says: 


“One main reason why the native churches do not become self-supporting is, that 
our missionaries have been afraid to allow them to become so. Transition might be 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [59] 


followed by commotion, and that, perhaps, by decrease. Our present paid preacher- 
ship stands dead in the way of the independence of our Bengal churches. I have long 
ceased to entertain hope of the churches ever becoming self-sustaining while the pres- 
ent system continues. They could not possibly afford to pay their pastors anything 
like the salaries paid by the societies to their preachers.” 


Consider the opinion of Rev. C. H. Carpenter: 


“Of the ten million dollars and over raised annually by the Protestant churches 
of Europe and America for Foreign Missions, not less than four millions, probably, 
are expended on the support of native agents (such as preachers, pastors, teachers, 
eatechists, colporters, deacons, medical assistants, chapel-keepers, Bible-women, ete.,) 
on Bibles and other books, on the erection, repair and rent of church, school and dor- 
mitory buildings, hospitals and dispensaries, for the use and benefit of the natives. 
Fifty years ago these expenditures were insignificant in amount but they have grown 
like the banyan tree. That which was an occasional practice has become a great 
system, which, octopus-like, clutches the whole mission organization in its tentacles. 
At the present rate of increase, young people now living may expect confidently to 
see the day when fifty million dollars a year will be required to pay these subsidies 
to the rapidly increasing communities of ‘converts’ in pagan lands. It is already a 
serious question how the funds are to be gathered; and, when one in ten of the thou- 
sand millions are tiws converted, two hundred million dollars yearly will be required 
for subsidies alone, to say nothing about the support of missionaries. It is a system 
unrecognized, and apparently unanticipated, in the New Testament; a gigantic evil 
which threatens the native churches with either corruption and worldliness, while im- 
posing upon the churches of Christian lands a burden already amounting to millions 
annually.” 


Rev. J. S. Beacher writes: 


“Had you been with us in the Karen Jungle this season to see what we saw of 
the evil influence of the hireling system upon native preachers and churches, it would 
satisfy you of the correctness of our apprehension respecting donations (for their 
support) .” ; 


While it is far from satisfactory to read of the manner in which 
the poor people of heathen countries are brought within the pale of 
Christian Churches, and kept there with money or with other material 
benefits which appeal to their cupidity, we consider the facts contained 
in the 1908 Report of the Southern Baptist Convention on the Italian 
mission to be about the most dismal reading that we have ever encoun- 
tered. 

Rey. D. G. Whittinghill writes from Rome, Italy. On page 116 of 
the report he says: 

“The numerous scandals in convents and monasteries brought to light during the 
summer by newspapers and governmental authorities, and the continual propaganda 
carried on by the social or anti-clerical organizations have almost destroyed faith in 
the Roman Catholic Church, and especially the clergy. This is a not unmixed evil. 
The nation is turning in great numbers to infidelity or skepticism, and unless God 
intervenes by his saving power, Italy will go from bad to worse. May God save her 
from moral ruin.” 


’ 


Yet Italy has been a Christian land almost from the time of Peter 
and Paul. The gospel has been preached here about as long as it has 
been heard anywhere. From what conception of duty, of divine 
command, are we asked to take upon our shoulders the. regular annua! 
expenses of supporting missionary work among these Italians? 


[60] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


We Baptists have a Theological Seminary in Rome. I shouldn't 
wonder if it is the joke of Europe. We have a faculty of five high- 
priced Professors, and a few years ago the total attendance of students 
was four. I note that they now have eleven Italian youths being 
brought up in this expensive Theological Seminary. Two students to 
each professor! Recently our Baptist periodicals have been publish- 
ing a photograph of the human contents of our Rome Theological 
Seminary, and the Faculty had to stand up with the students in order 
to make the picture more realistic and plausible. 

Taking up the report of the work in detail: I hardly know whether 
we ought to laugh or weep. Perhaps we ought to do both. 

Here are a few extracts: 


“Avellino has been in charge of Signor Ciambellotti, an ex-student of our Theo- 
logical Seminary, for two years. He has doubled the Sunday-school numbers and 
has baptized the wife and daughter of an English merchant. The colporteur of the 
place was baptized at the same time. There is great need of a larger and better lo- 
cated hall.” 


“Bari is needing a younger and more energetic pastor. Signor Volpi is too old 
for this field. Of late, the work has been made more difficult by scandals in another 
evangelical church of the place. Catholics are easily offended at any irregularities 
among us, but the boldest sins and most outrageous customs among themselves seem 
to be taken as a matter of course. Strange to say, this church has numerous hear- 
ers, but none have been converted and baptized for two years. 

“Bolleti is evangelized every two weeks by Signor Volpi, but prospects of increase 
are few, as four Christians have lately died and two others have removed elsewhere.” © 

“Bassaccia for two years was a very promising field, but an imprudent and sus- 
pected pastor arrested its growth for a season. He was promptly removed elsewhere.” 


“Cagliarri. This church has been severed by schismatics last year, and has not 
yet recovered.” 
“Iglessi. Senor Pintis, the pastor, has been greatly afflicted by false brethren 


during the year. Two of them have gone elsewhere, and one has died, so ther: is 
more prospect of peace than formerly.” 


In Rome itself, our mission work has been organized ever since 
1872. We now have forty-eight members. Last year we baptized two. 
In Florence we have a membership of thirty-four, and we baptized 
three last year, but the church undertook to revise the membership 
rolls and for that reason we lost twenty-four names. (I would like 
very much to know why, but the report doesn’t state.) 

In Capri, organized in 1855, we have a membership of eighteen. 
Last year we baptized another one. To quote from the record: “The 
church seems to be unable to rise above the ill effects of scandals in 
connection with two of its former ministers some years ago.” 

Ferrara. Not organized. Four Baptists. No baptisms. A beau- 
tiful and centrally located hall was procured and fitted up. 

Consadolo. Organized in 1904. Membership ten. No baptisms 
last year. 

Pordenone. Organized in 1904. Membership eighteen. No bap- 
tisms last year. The report says, “The work progresses slowly on ac- 
count of the two organizations in town. 1 made strenuous efforts to 
effect a union of the two bodies but failed, owing to the pastor of the 


other body demanding too much money. The outlook is not prom- 
ising.” 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [61] 


Milan. Membership thirty. Two baptisms last year. Church 
was organized twenty years ago. The report says, ‘““We have here a 
very beautiful and expensive hall.” 

Novari. Membership twelve. No baptisms last year. With un- 
conscious irony the report uses this language, ““We hope more lasting 
good is being done than appears on the surface.” Amen! 

Summing up the whole matter, the report concludes: 

“The year 1907 has been for the missionaries a year of disappointment, of hope 
deferred, of sorrow and anxiety, of joy and consecration, and finally regret at feeling 
it our duty to rest for a season that full health might return. ‘Some things, how- 


ever, were done. <A full and complete system of keeping books of the mission was 
~ 5 . 
adopted, new and beautiful halls were procured for Florence, Ferrara and San Remo.” 


Well, if any kind of missionary work would make a man sick, it is 
the up-hill work of Italian missions. No converts to speak of, but a 
new system of bookkeeping adopted and three more fine churches 
bought with American money! Hence our satisfaction! 

On page 91 of Rev. J. A. Scarboro’s book, “The Bible, Baptists and 
Board System”, I find the following paragraph: 

“Take one field, Italy. There were only four missionaries from the Home 
Church in that field, and fourteen native preachers. The four missionaries at $600 
each would get $2,400, but the Board reports the expenditures for EKuropean missions 
at $16,950.67. This is the Italian missions, for the Board has no other in Europe. 
So there was $2,400 spent on missionaries from the home land, and the balance of 
the $16,950.67 on native preachers and other things not stated in the report. Put the 
fourteen native preachers at $300 each, big wages for an Italian, and we have $4,300, 
making $6,600 for preaching, including the natives, and $12,750.67 for other pur- 
poses.” 

We Baptists should never forget the Ital- 
ian priest who was carried around and put 
on exhibition as one of the trophies, some 
years ago. As long as we kept him on the 
pay-roll, he was a good Baptist: The mo- 
ment we shut off his monthly salary, he re- 
lapsed into Papa’s arms, becoming a strong- 
er and louder Catholic than ever. 

Mr. Scarboro very pertinently asks, “Js 7¢ 
the duty of the Church to support such a sys- 
tem as that? Is it obeying the Lord of mis- 
sions?” On pages 93-94, Mr. Scarboro col- 
lates some facts from the minutes of the 
Convention of 1908. At the Rio Church, 
Brazil, sixty-five members out of the two 
hundred and thirty were dropped. At Nich- 

Si Me et ee ie theroi the house was closed and the work 

mines. Smaller boy not ten given up. At Paciencia the church dis- 
years and weighed less than * vist ~ eee ye 

sixty-five pounds. solved. From Guanda the missionary wrote 

plaintively, “I have nothing encouraging. to 

write of this church.” Teng Chow, “A most active young preacher, 

well educated, zealous and beloved has fallen into the sin of adultery, 

and we have had to dismiss him. <A few of our members have been 


[62] | FOREIGN MISSIONS 


guilty of drinking liquor, smoking opium, and even lying and steal- 
ing.” Hawangheim, “We have had variance among the brethren and 
some gross sins on the part of some.” Chin Kiang, “Some tares 
among the wheat. One 
of the greatest mistakes 
of mission work in Chi- 
na is the receiving into 
the church those who 
have not been born 
again.” 

After citing other in- 
stances of similar char- 
acter, Brother Scarboro 
is moved to say: 


“Thus corrupt natives are 
hired with mission money to 
preach, some of whom prove 
to be adulterers, some who 
use their office for gain, with 
a result that. these mission 
churches are corrupted in 
ministry and membership and 
remain mere hangers-on for 
profit. 

“These evils have been 
pointed out time and again, 


to the boards North and Interior of a Southern cotton mill. Here children of a 
' kate Pe tender age are compelled to labor many hours each day amid 

South by faithful mission- nerve-racking noise of machinery, and flying dust. 

aries like Carpenter and Craw- COPYRIGHT BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD 


ford, the boards know and 
admit it is a great evil, and dismiss and humiliate the missionaries for their honest 
and truthful pains. 

“What Baptist feels like giving money for such work as this? 

“The Foreign Board says in its report: ‘The churches in foreign lands must be 
taught independence and self-support.’ 

“But still they hold on to the hireling system.” 


The first question which suggests itself when we find American 
missionaries at work in France, Italy and Austria is, “What are you 
dong THERE?” 

Protestantism had its birth in Germany and France. Powerful 
Protestant churches have always existed in Continental Europe. Why, 
then, should not we American Protestants have the European Protest- 
ants to tackle the European Catholics? Why should we go so far 
afield to fight Roman Catholicism, when Roman Catholicism is driving 
Protestantism out of so many American cities? Why take up a heavy 
load which French and German Protestants are so much abler to bear? 
Upon what theory do we demand of Protestant congregations in the 
United States the money for the support of Foreign Missions in Cath- 
olic countries where Protestants, by the million, have been at work 
for centuries? The Protestants of Germany have been on solid ground 
ever since they weathered the storm of the Thirty Years War, 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [63] 


and dominant ever since Frederick the Great gave Austria her first set- 
back. The Protestants of Holland made good their stand against the 
Catholics of France, of Germany and of Spain, and today they are 
rich and strong. The Protestants of France have been the victims of 
many a barbarous and bloody persecution, but their numbers have 
maintained about the same proportion to the Catholics that they bore 
when they rushed into battle, led by the white plume of Navarre. How 
strange it is that American Protestants should go to Europe to do the 
work which these European Protestants are so much more able to do! 


CHAPTER IV. 


N A RECENT issue of The Christian Index, appeared a communi- 
cation from Rev. William H. Smith, of Richmond, Va. 
The opening paragraph laid down the law in the following 
flat-footed way: 

“There van be no question but that the great masses of the people in Catholic 
countries need the Gospel. It is the testimony of missionaries and others that for 
most part the people in Catholic countries are as ingorant of the saving truth of 
the Gospel as they are in heathen lands. We are as much obligated to give these 
people the word of God and the knowledge of the way of salvation as we are to give 
it to any other people in the world. No Protestant, and certainly no Baptist, could 
deny the need and our responsibility for preaching to the people who do not know 
the Gospel.” 


I consider that a fine specimen of self-complacent ministerial dog- 
matism. The learned Doctor opens the discussion of a very big ques- 
tion by saying there is nothing to discuss. It reminds me of a Trust 
magnate, like Divine-right Baer, saying to a lot of strikers who propose 
arbitration, “There is nothing to arbitrate.” 

Well! well/! WELLI!! 

So we Protestaits have not only got to buckle down to it and give 
800,000,000 pagans a heave-up,—materially, mentally, morally, and 
spiritually—but we must shoulder the responsibility for a couple of 
hundred millions of Catholic Christians, also. My! That’s a whop- 
ping contract ! 

But “There is no question” about it,—Dr. Smith settled the whole 
thing in his very first paragraph. ; 

We Protestants of the United States are sending missionaries to 
Austria, Italy, France, Portugal and Spain. As everybody knows, the 
nations enumerated constitute an integral part of Christendom. From 
these countries went forth the Crusaders, under the banners of the 
Cross, to wrench from the infidels the sepulchre of Christ. Yet, al- 
though these countries were converted to Christianity hundreds of 
years before the white man ever put his foot upon the American con- 
tinent, we are now asked by the foreign missionaries to supply them 
with money, in order that they may go to Europe and establish schools, 
open churches and convert these Catholic Christians to the Protestant 


faith, 


[64] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


The ground upon which this policy is based is, that Catholicism is 
tan tamount to paganism. Missionary literature describes the Catholic 
religion as idolatrous and debasing. In the book entitled “What God 
Has Wrought”, published recently by the Church and Mission Alli- 
ance, page 151, I find an interesting reference to conditions in Anam: 


“Here are twenty-two millions of immortal souls for whom our Savior died, and 
no one to tell them the story of His love. Are the Anamites a degraded heathen 
people? Yes, even more so, if possible, than the Chinese, and not only so but doubly 
damned by the blight and curse of Romanism.” 


In another place this book refers to Roman Catholicism as “that 
degrading superstition.” 

In the book called “Foreign Missions After a Century,” by James 
S. Dennis, D. D., page 162, the author says :— 


“Tt is happily true that Romish, and especially Jesuit missions, are not con- 
tent simply to push their own work side by side with evangelical agencies, but they 
wage war upon Protestant missions and seek with wnserupulous deal and bitter 
determination to destroy them. The missions of the Romish Chureh are active, vig-~ 
orous and extended. Upon almost every field of Protestant missionary activity we 
have these cunning and implacable foes crowding against us and seeking through 
every channel of influence to stay our progress.” @ 


The author then proceeds to show that in Japan, China, Tonquin, 
Cochin China, Ceylon, Malaysia, the Caroline Islands and the Punjab, 
as well as in Syria, Mexico, and Uganda, the Catholics are making 
alarming headway. 

The Rey. J. H. Eager, under the auspices of the American Baptist 
Publication Society, has given to the world a most valuable work called 
“Romanism in Its Home” . From this book we make the following ex- 
tracts: 


“To my great surprise, I found people bowing before images and actually pray- 
ing to them, and to my horror I learned that Catholicism not ‘only sanctions and en- 
courages this practice, but strictly enjoins it upon the people, promising a special 
blessing to all who comply therewith. 

“A visit to Naples, Southern Italy, in 1881, increased my surprise and_ sor- 
row, for there | found not only refined, respectable idolatry, but a low and gross form 
of it, worthy only of uncivilized pagans. 1 began to feel also that just in those 
places where the priests have most power over the whee a there ignorance, supersti- 
tion and vice seem to abound in greatest measure.” 

“On entering another church in Rome I found three images. all of which were 
supposed to possess miraculous powers. Seeing a very ugly, repulsive- looking head, 
crowned with thorns, and blood trickling down on the face, and the features all dis- 
torted and disfigured, I asked the old sexton what it meant, and he informed me that 
it was an ancient head of Christ. ‘Do people come here to pray to this head?’ I 
asked. 

““Yes, indeed,’ he replied. 

““But why do they pray to it? Does it perform miracles? I inquired, 

“ “Why, certainly; do you not see the many votive offerings which have. been 
brought by those who have received a blessing? Hvery church has an image that 
works miracles, 

“T once said to an ex-priest: ‘Is it true that image worship exists in the Cath- 
olie churches of Italy?” 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [65] 


“He replied without a moment's hesitation: ‘Yes, pure and simple. Perhaps, 
he added, ‘the more intelligent make a distinetion between the image and that rep- 
resented by it, but thousands fix their thoughts on the image alone, and actually pay 
their devotions to the piece of wood or stone which is before them.’ 

“Once convince the people that these images work miracles and confer great 
spiritual blessings—and many of the priests leave no stone upturned to accomplish 
this purpose— is it not natural for them to conclude that they are worthy of venera- 
tion and adoration ? 

“I have in my possession a remarkable book published in Rome in 1797, ‘De 
Prodigi Avvenuti in Molte Sacre Immagini’, ete., with the approval of the Vatican 
authorities and written by the ‘Apostolic Examiner of the Clergy.’ On page 87 I find 
the following words: 

=v in the. new series of marvels which the EE at; of God had reserved until our 
times, it seems that He also wished to confirm the faith of the Catholic Church and 
to animate and authenticate the pious custom of the faithful in preserving and offer- 
ing worship to the Most Holy Images, not only in our churches and oratories, but 


also in private houses, and especially in the public streets, and in the presence of 
all’? 


From Mexico, the West Indies, and from South America come 
similar accounts of the degradation into which Roman Catholicism 
sinks its votaries. Take Bishop Eas C. Morrison’s description of a typi- 

‘al home in Brazil: 


“Go in the average Brazilian home and see what Romanism has done for family 
life. No Bible or any other book to drive out ignorance and superstition. Hard- 
ness and apparent hopelessness on every hand. A miserable crucifix on the bare wall 
with faded pictures of traditional saints. A pole twenty feet high erected at the 
front of the house, with a flag at the top, bearing the picture of some particular 
saint on whom they depend for protection against certain ills or evils. Sometimes, 
there are from two to six of these saint flags in front of the same cheerless abode. 
(It is only a lodging-place, not a home.) One saint protects against storms, an- 
other against disease, and so on ad infinitum. The wife of the ordinary Brazilian in 
the rural districts is the woman who stays at a man’s house, takes care of the chil- 
dren, does the washing, feeds the pigs, cooks his beans and rice and waits on him 
while he eats. Hopelessness and dejection are stamped upon the face that seems as if 
it never knew the blessing of a smile. The children in these homes are to know what 
the parents know and leave the same legacy of soul slavery and superstition to their 
children. Such is the work of Romanism in Brazil and in all South America.” 


Such facts as these are set forth to justify mission work in Catholic 
countries. 

Necessity compels the missionaries to prove to us that Roman Cath- 
olicism is a degrading paganism,—else they would have no excuse 
whatever for asking us to incur the expense of sending the Word of 
God to those who already have it. But if that be the Protestant view- 
point, why go abroad to combat the Pope? He can give us ali the 
fighting we want right here at home. He rules our cities. He has been 
the mightiest factor in our politics, ever since the priests of New York 
beat James G. Blaine. Cardinal Gibbons is the power behind the 
throne. The Catholic hierarchy is so powerful that both old parties 
fear it and obey it. : 

We dare not claim for the state the right to know what is going 
on in Nunneries, where young and healthy women are taught obedience 
to young and healthy priests. We can send missionaries to Italy, and 


[66] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


these can publish books about the scandals that attach to the priests 
and the nuns. They make no bones of telling us that in H’urope when 
a man becomes a priest he does not cease to be a man, nor lose the pas- 
sions of a man. Therefore, we learn that there is always a good-looking 
housekeeper at the priestly residence, and that the prurient curiosity 
and sexual appetites of girls and women are tickled, stimulated and 
blown into flames by the licentiously suggestive questions asked at the 
confessional. 


Our Protestant missionaries dwell indignantly upon such inherent . 


ills of the Roman Catholic system, as seen in Hurope; but where 1s 
Protestantism forming its line of battle against the papal legions 77 
this country ? 

Will Catholicism be different in America? Wall not the fruits of 
the tree be the same here, as in Italy? If priests and nuns have the 
frailties of men and women in Europe, how do they get rid of them in 
America? If superstitious practices are abhorrent to common sense 
when seen in Spain, Portugal and South America, why do they excite 
no loathing in the United States? /f in Europe, Roman Catholicism 
has sunk its votaries in idolatry, vice, ignorance, mental and spiritual 
darkness, why, in the name of God! are we not bending every energy to 
arrest its swift advance in our own country ? 

Of recent years an almost incredible change has crept over our 
people. The sturdy independence of mind which in earlier days 
mocked the priest and defied the king has been superseded by a grov- 
eling flunkeyism which prostrates itself before the altar and the throne. 
The highest ambition of our Society people is to be “presented” to the 
bloated voluptuary who wears the English crown: the loftiest aspira- 
tion of fourteen millions of American Catholics it to be permitted to 
kiss a cardinal’s ring or a pope’s foot. The spell of superstition has 
laid hold of the land. We are becoming idolatrous pagans. We believe 
in “miracles” worked by the touch of old bones, by a bath in sanctified 
water, by prayers offered to some “Saint”. 

Just one example! 

There is a monthly magazine, Bethlehem, published by the Cath- 
olics. Its chief object seems to be to propagate “the devotion to St. An- 
thony of Padua”. 

This Saint, we are told, has great influence in the councils of the 
Most High, and prayers to him are always answered when those who 
seek favors are willing to pay for them. The payments are made to 


the priests, of course. Concerning the reality of the thing, Pope Leo 
XIII wrote: 


“It would seem as if this image invites and so to speak, provokes the faithful to 
ask the Saint for favors, binding themselves as soon as they shall have received 
them to give a sum of money settled by themselves and which is employed in buying 
bread for those in want, * * *” 


Here we have the Holy Papa himself giving a certificate of good 


character to St. Anthony and declaring that the Saint invites and pro- 


vokes the faithful, who are willing to pay for the favors, to ask for 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [67] 


them. No matter what favor may be desired, the Saint is ready to take 
the case, provided the faithful are willing to pay the fee. The good 
and powerful Anthony invariably gets what is wanted. Is it a lost 
pocketbook? Is it a good husband? Is it escape from fire or sickness ? 
Is it a servant? Is it relief from pain? Is it a tenant for a vacant 
house? St. Anthony is the most versatile and accommodating Saint on 
the calendar,—he attends to all such matters as those mentioned, as you 
can learn from letters written to Bethlehem by the grateful devotees. 
The following are fair samples: 
(1) 

“T am sending you an offering in thanksgiving for a favor granted through St. 

Joseph and St. Anthony.—I lost an article and at once commenced a novena, and 


promised to have it published in the Bethlehem. On the second day the article was 
restored to me. Surely St. Anthony is a miracle worker.” 


(2) 

“T send you an offering in thanksgiving for the favour granted through the holy 
intercession of St. Anthony. The intention for which I requested your prayers was 
that I might get a good and suitable husband and happy home, and thank God my 
desire has been granted, much to the surprise of every one.” 


(3) 

“T promised an offering to St. Anthony for your school. Jf he would help my sis- 
ter recover a pocketbook containing money and jewelry, which she had lost. My re- 
quest was granted, the book being found in a mysterious manner.—T. O’B., Brook- 
Tons Ui 830 A.” 

(4) 

“T enclose an offering in honour of St. Anthony and for a Mass for the Souls in 
Purgatory. I promised this offering to St. Anthony, if he would get a tenant for a 
house that was vacant for months, so now it is rented and I hasten to fulfill my 
promise. I also enclose an offering for a mass of thanksgiving in honour of the Sa- 
cred Heart of Jesus for all the graces and blessings bestowed on us.—M. B., Louis- 
ville,.U..8.. Al? 

(5) 

“Enclosed find an offering to Dear St. Anthony, the Infant Jesus, His Holy 
Mother and St. Joseph for favours received. 

“We had a contagious disease and two members of the family escaped after in- 
voking our patron. The other had a safe and speedy recovery. We were also as- 
sisted in a former sickness which I failed to mention. Dear St. Anthony never fails 
to help when I invoke him.—B. M., U. S. A.” 


(6) 

“You will find enclosed herewith my offering, in payment of a debt to St. An- 
thony, who has helped me in a most providential manner to find an object which I 
value very much and which I thought I had left behind me, when traveling, in the 
train. Now after making a promise to St. Anthony, I have found this object in a 
trunk where I have no recollection of having put it.” 


(7) 

“T had recommended myself to St. Anthony and to the Souls in Purgatory, prom- 
ising a Mass and insertion in ‘Bethlehem’ if I found a sum of money which was want- 
ed. My prayer was granted so I hasten to fulfill my promise and recommend myself 
to the prayers of the Institute.” 
(8) 

* “TJ had promised an offering if my son obtained the position he wished for. The 
prayer was granted at the very moment we least expected it. Thanks to St. An- 
thony.” 


[68] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


(9) 
“A great forest-fire threatened our land. We appealed to St. Anthony, who has 
preserved us from the scourge we feared. Thanks to this good Saint.—H. L., Saint 


Esprit, Canada.” 
(10) 

“T was suffering a great pain in my eyes for several days. Then it occurred to 
me to apply to the painful part the blessed medal of St. Anthony and our lady of 
Lourdes. A great relief followed. I thank my holy Patron-Saints and beg you to 
publish this favour in ‘Bethlehem’.—E. R., U. C., Canada.” 

(11) 

“A yelation of mine had some,payments to meet and had not the necessary sum 
to fulfill the engagement at the appointed time. She promised a mass in honour of 
St. Anthony for the Souls in Purgatory, if work arrived in time. She had no cause 
for disappointment in St Anthony.” 

(12) 

“T request you to have three masses said in honour of St. Anthony through 
whose intercession I have found two good servants and have obtained another tem- 
poral favour.—A CnILp or Mary.” 


Would you have believed that a modern Pope could encourage such 
idiotic superstition as these letters disclose? Did you know that there 
were people, outside the lunatic asylums, capable of writing such let- 
ters? Could you have imagined that there were magazines being pub- 
lished which are crammed, month after month, with such imbecile 
drivel, such nauseating nonsense ? 

That kind of thing carries one back to the Dark Ages, fills one with 
shame and disgust, and causes one to fear that, after all, it is a hopeless 
undertaking to strive to free mankind from priesthoods and aristocra- 
cies—the twin curses that have destroyed so many a state. 


Tf it has not recently been taken down, you may see, just inside the 
main entrance of one of the oldest and most beautiful cemeteries in 
America, a box, with a slot for the coin, under a placard worded in 
large letters: , 


“AH, HOW I SUFFER IN THESE FLAMES, AND YOU FORGET ME.” 


Beneath this appeal, from the soul in Purgatory, comes the request 
for money: 


“Contributions placed in this box will be used to provide for saying masses for 
the souls of the faithful who are buried in this cemetery.” 


You feel like rubbing your eyes, don’t you? You have been smiling 
indifferently, as you read of superstition in Hurope and South Amer- 
ica,—but is it not time for you to realize that religious blindness knows 
no geography, halts at no frontier, draws no color line, wields a scep- 
tre—old as the human race—which will never be broken as long as 
fear-enslaved mothers shackle their children with the dread of death, 
making them cowards to the Unknown? . 

* * * ** * co * * ** 

While Missionary literature is flooding the country and every min- 

ister of the Gospel is practically under orders to make a specialty of 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [69] 


collections for the foreign field: while the demand for the annual ex- 
penditures for the work has been advanced to $80,000,000, and one of 
the great churches has definitely assumed as its “share” the training, 
education and conversion of 40,000,000 heathen, let us take a glance 
over the home field. Let us see what Americans are doing for Amer- 
ica. Before we lose our minds entirely in the fine frenzy for the poor 
benighted heathen, let us endeavor to get an intelligent comprehension 
of our own national conditions and tendencies. Before we go daft about 
the “Uplift of China”, let us be certain that we don’t need an uplift 
ourselves. 

In the United States we are spending $600,000,000 yearly in the ef- 
fort to punish crime, and everybody knows that crime was never so 
rampant. Only the weak and clumsy criminal gets caught and pun- 
ished. The cunning and the great can not be handled at all. Within 
the period of a few months there were more than a hundred murders 
in New York City which were classed as “mysterious”, because the as- 
sassins could never be identified and arrested. Beneath the shelter of 
some Secret Society, the red-handed criminal ducked and disappeared. 

While engaged in correcting the typewritten copy of this article, 
the following item of news appeared in the New York Globe: 


“T was hungry—starving, your honor. I did not want to die, so I took that meat 
so I might live,” pleaded nineteen-year-old Harry Rosenberg to Magistrate Breen in 
Essex Market Court when arraigned today on a charge of burglary of the butcher 
shop of Max Lent, at 73 Norfolk street. 

The young man did not get out of the shop with the half-liver and three pounds 
of chops he had taken, however, as Butcher Hyman Sargon entered and found Rosen- 
berg there. 

“T’m sorry for the chap,” said the magistrate, “for I believe his story. But I 
can do nothing for him in the sight of the law, except to commend him for telling 
the truth.” 

“T hold nim in $1,500 bail for trial.” 

As Rosenberg could not produce bail, he will eat in jail pending trial. 


On the same day, the papers were telling us how Federal Judge 
Hand, of the same city, declined to require bonds of the indicted Sugar 
Trust magnates and released those self-confessed but powerful crim- 
inals to the custody of their own lawyers! The starving youth who 
grabbed a piece of raw beef is in jail and will be punished: the thieves 
who were caught stealing nine million dollars from the Government 
walked smilingly out of court without having to even sign a recog- 
nizance. Items similar to the e could be listed by the score. There is 
one law for the rich and another for the poor,—we see it all over the 
land. 

In 1850 there was in the United States one prisoner to 3,500 of pop- 
ulation; in 1860, one to every 1,600; in 1880, one to 900; in 1890, one to 
every 800. And the shame of it is that thousands who ought to be pris- 
oners never are. We have some crimes and some criminals that we 
find ourselves utterly unable to punish. 

The most alarming feature about the increase of the lawbreaking 
class is the heavy proportion of juvenile offenders. Boys of tender age 


[70] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


commit every variety of crime, from petit larceny to assaults on girls. 

Did it ever occur to you that 1,752,187 of the children in this Union, 
under the age of sixteen years, are at work i in factories, mines, quarries, 
and sw eatshops? In this frightful haste is the Saturn of our Christian 
civilization devouring his own children. 

Do you realize what it means to our future when the census reports 
prove that the disgrace of illiteracy hangs like a millstone about our 
necks ? 

Is it nothing to you that your colleges sneer at your creed, and the 
Socialist vows the downfall of your state? 

Does the despair of the suicide,—the wretch who took his own life 
because he could get no work and his children were crying for bread 
amid riches such as the world never knew before,—strike no terror to 
your soul ? 

When you ponder upon the sordid Commercialism which counts 
human life as naught and dollars as all; when you see how the laws 
rob those whose labor brings forth the wealth; when you reflect that 
the Moloch of profits and dividends is demanding the annual sacrifice 
of a larger number of human lives than fell during any year of our 
Civil War—have you no sickening doubts about the integrity of what 
we call our Christian civilization? 

Have you no doubt of the success of our system when you are told 
by such men as Dr. Alexander MeNicholl that, 


“Conditions in the New York public schools rival those of ancient Sodom. The 
degeneracy, mental deficiency and other drawbacks to the proper education of youth 
have increased at a pace that threatens the future of the Republic.” 


When you learn that the tentacles of the white-slave traffic enfold 
and drag down 65,000 white women of our land every year, does your 
optimism find no difficulty in wearing its patent-leather smile? 

When a New York physician like Dr. W. W. Sanger, and a Goy- 
ernment Commission like that appointed by President Roosevelt indict 
our Christian commercialism for the degradation of our fallen sisters, 
do you feel no distrust,—no fear that the soul has gone out of our civ- 
ilization and that its own heartlessness will break it down? 

In the report of the Roosevelt “Homes Commission” (page 301 and 
those following) is a study of wages and the cost of living. It is found 
that the prices of the necessaries of life have advanced and that wages, 
measured by their purchasing power, have decreased. That is, the 
workman who is paid more than in 1906, is unable to purchase now as 
much food and clothing as he did then with his smaller w wages. 

The Commission carefully investigated the cost of living in the cit- 
ies and found that it was $768.54 per family per year. It then took up 
the matter of the weekly earnings of 3,297,811 toilers, and found that 
the avera ge was $10.06. The males of sixteen years and over averaged 
$11.16 per week; the women, $6.17; the children under sixteen years, 
$3.46. Of the men, 1,215,798 (or 46 1. 2 per cent. of the whole number) 
earn less than $10 per aveck, 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [71] 


The Commission reports that “it ¢s utterly impossible” to support a 
family on those wages. 

Therefore, what happens? 

Men take to drink, crime and suicide: women go to the sweatshops, 
the factories, the brothels: the children go to the dividend-mill, to the 
House of Correction, to the Potter’s Field. 

And this in a Christian land, where we have the Protective System 
in all its glory, levying the highest tariffs ever known, for the purpose 
of insuring good wages to Labor! 

After this final chapter on Missions was written and while it was 
being typed,.came a startling corroboration to the testimony tending to 
prove that our churches are not doing right by our own people. Rev. 
Loomis O. Black, one of the most popular clergymen of New York 
State, refused to continue doing ministerial work, although his congre- 
gation offered to double his salary. He abandons the ministry and 
states why. He says: 


“The Chureh has absolutely no desire to wield any influence to help the common 
people to get fair play. It is not back of any organization of men to get their rights. 
The moneyed classes of today control the attitude of the Church toward any prob- 
lem. The Church is more interested in righting men’s little faults and inconsisten- 
cies than it is in dealing with the great faults that are undermining society. 

“The Church will find fault with a vaudeville performance or a baseball game 
on Sunday, but it will say nothing against a system which year after year degrades 
and starves millions. Why, today in this country there are four millions of persons 
starving and the Church, while it has a sympathetic spirit and deals out charity, is 
doing absolutely nothing to remove the causes that produce that unfortunate con- 
dition. 

“In the days gone by the Church has wielded a tremendous influence, but it has 
undeniably lost its hold on the people because for many years it has had no definite 
policy on any vital problem. It has been interested in its theology, discussing its 
creeds and attempting to build up its denominations, rather than to minister to the 
real needs of man.” 


Within triumpet call of the palaces of such detestable Pharisees as 
Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan and John Wan- 
amaker you may find the needle-woman bent over her work in some 
foul, pestilential dungeon of a tenement stitching white aprons (re- 
quiring, with the band, six long seams) at 15 cents per dozen. She has 
to pay expressage on the finished aprons as they are returned to the 
Christian firm which employs her, and the net earning to her on 120 
aprons is $1.35. She can not average more than 36 aprons per day: 
consequently, ¢f she has no illness herself, and has no sick child to 
nurse, She can earn a wage of 40 cents per day, out of which must come 
food, clothing, rent and all other living expenses for herself and chil- 
dren. The Christian firm, which pays her a little more than a cent 
apiece for making the aprons, sells them at 25 cents each. The cloth 
perhaps cost five or six cents. 

Go to another reeking, stinking room and you will find a widow 
and a little brood of children. The mother is making trousers for a 
clothing firm. These pantaloons are sold out from New York as cus- 
tom made, and are intended for fashionable summer use. The woman 


[72] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


gets 10 cents a pair for making those trousers which sell at from $5 to 
$10. Unless she puts an extraordinary strain upon herself, she can not 
finish more than three pairs a day. : 

The hideous annals of the sweatshops are strewn with details 
equally heart-rending. For knee-pants of the grammar-school size, 
the sewing-woman gets 16 cents per dozen. For cheap overcoats, she is 
paid four cents apiece ; for the finer quality, lined with satin, she gets 
eight cents apiece! 

For men’s ordinary coats, she is paid sé# cents each; for fine panta- 
loons, 13 cents a pair. For the uniforms, worn by United States mail 
carriers, the sewing-women get nine and a half cents a pair. For over- 
alls, with straps going over the shoulders, and with thirty distinct 
seams to be stitched, making in all 32 1-2 feet of sewing, the seamstress 
is paid five cents, from which is deducted the cost of carriage both 
ways,—from the Christian firm to her sickly den, and from her den 
back to the magnificent store. To add to the agony of this work, the 
cloth is stiff, hard on her sewing machine, and breaks about 10 cents’ 
worth of needles every week. 

Yet our misguided people are going crazy for cots in Chinese hos- 
pitals, gymnasiums for Korea, and kindergartens for Japan! Great 
God! Why have we no eyes and ears and hearts for the suffering, toil- 
ing, perishing millions here in Christian America ? 

President Roosevelt appointed a Commission to investigate the 
homes of our people,—not the homes of heathen, but the homes of 
Christians. The official report of that Commission was so appalling 
that the Government suppressed it. I am indebted to the courtesy of 
Senator A. O. Bacon for a copy of so much of that report as was put 
in pamphlet form. This document, prepared by national officials and 
published by national authority, furnishes terrible testimony against 
the foreign missionary fanatics who are acting upon the theory that 
all is well with us in our Christian republic. 

The array of evidence relating to poverty, to vice, to the social evil, 
to drug fiends, to the deadly nostrums of quacks, to the health-destroy- 
ing conditions under which our working-people labor, to unsanitary 
dwellings,—to adulterated food, to infant mortality, to diseases due to 
vice, to the drink evil, to illiteracy, to the horrors of the slums—ought 
to be sufficient to whip the conscience and torture the soul of every 
Christian and humanitarian in America. 

On page 222, the facts are given touching 2,000 prostitutes who 
were asked how they came to be in that business. Nearly all of them 
were girls or young women: only 96 were over 40 years of age. The 
majority of them were natives of New York and the New England 
States. 

And one-fourth of the number of these fallen angels, when asked to 
tell why they were leading that kind of life, answered, “From inclina- 
tion!” Merciful heaven! What is the matter with Christianity, 7 
Puritan New England, when 513 out of 2,000 harlots, mainly from our 
self-righteous section, will brazenly tell investigators, “T came into a 
brothel because I wanted to live that way?” 


se 
; 


+ FOREIGN MISSIONS [73] 


And we,—smug, conceited, Pharisaical in the perfunctory perform- 
ance of the ceremonial of religion—are mightily concerned lest the Ko- 
rean boys should not have a splendid gymnasium, and the Korean girls 
should not have a boarding-school where they can be protected and 
nurtured until they marry ! 

But why did the other three-fourths of the 2,000 American women 
become inmates of houses of ill-fame? 

Five hundred and twenty-five declared that destitution drove them 
to it: 258 said that they had been seduced and abandoned: 181 owed 
their ruin to drink: the ill-treatment of parents, relations and husbands 
was the cause assigned by 164; bad company and the persuasion of bad 
women victimized 155; idleness and the wish to have an easy life mis- 
led 154; while 24 were seduced on board emigrant ships, and 27 were 
violated. 

The greater number of these unfortunate creatures had been wage- 
earners, but 534 had been paid only one dollar per week; 336 had 
earned $2 per week; 230, $3; 127, $4. 

This brings us to that awful suggestion made to poor white girls by 
their Christian employers, “Get a gentleman friend to assist you.” 

Investigation has shown that the wages of women in the great 
Northern cities average less than $5 per week. For doing the same 
work as men, they are paid much less. What chance has a girl to es- 
cape temptation and ruin? ‘The conditions which we self-conceited 
Christians tolerate literally drive our people into poverty,—and pov- 
ery tends to make sots of the men and strumpets of the women. As 
one of the heart-broken victims cried out in her shame and bitter re- 
-ontment, “Let God Almighty judge who’s to blame most—I that was 
Criven or them that drove me to the pass I'm in.” 

With more than a million of our girls and boys ground up in the 
industrial hopper to produce dropsical dividends: with more than six 
millions of illiterates clogging the wheels; with ten millions sentenced 
to perpetual servitude by the laws which license the banking and man- 
ufacturing class to despoil the agricultural class of all it produces, ex- 
cepting a living wage; with tens of thousands of prostitutes contam1- 
nating the stream of national life with syphilitic infection,—to the woe 
of wives and the death or decadence of the offspring—and with a drink 
bill and a drug bill which almost stagger belief, who is it that escapes 
intense concern for our future? 


In the New York American, Mary Shaw, the actress, has an inter- 
view from which the following is taken: 


“Think of a room where a mother worked at baby robes which rich people later 
were to buy. She was surrounded by her own three children, whimpering and crying 
and longing for a little childish joy. At every effort on their part to laugh or talk 
or prattle they were warned by a ‘Hush, children, hush,’ from the mother. For four 
men slept at one end of the room on the bare floor, and unless the children kept still 
so that the men were not disturbed, they would not come to sleep here the next day 
and the woman would lose the five cents paid by each man for the sleeping privilege. 
The men worked at night, but were too poorly paid to get any better lodgings than 
these. The room, of course, abounded in disease germs.” 


[74] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


In the Atlanta Journal there recently appeared a letter from which 
I quote: 


“prror ATLANTA JOURNAL:—I am the widow of a newspaper man and I am re- 
duced to absolute beggary. I have not a dollar and I have three children. For God’s 
and humanity’s sake, won’t you help me? This is a prayer as much as if I were 
kneeling before you and speaking. I have tried and tried, perseveringly, steadily, 
desperately to find work that will enable me to support my children and myself and 
I meet with nothing but failure. Won’t you, through your paper, ask the newspaper 
fraternity to help me? It is bitter, so bitter, to me to do this, and for myself, I think 
I’d much prefer death, but for my children who are in misery and want, I must. If 
I can get enough money to supply their present needs while I go on trying for work, 
it may be that I can find it some time, for surely somewhere there mus‘ be work 
for one so willing and so anxious as I to find it.” 


President Taft’s brother owns a newspaper in Cincinnati which re- 
ported the case of Wm. B. Pettus, accused of counterfeiting. When ar- 
raigned in court, he said: 

“T plead guilty to everything. . . . When a man is starving he has got a 
right to do anything to get bread and butter. I was starving and I did this, either 
to get something to eat, or to break into jail where the State will have to feed me. 
The state is humane and will not let me starve in prison. It is my misfortune that, 
in order to get food, I have to commit a crime. I would rather work for my bread 
and butter, but I have not been able to find work.” 


In the Commercial-Appeal of Memphis, Tenn., appeared, Sunday 
morning, May 2, 1909, this advertisement : 


“SITUATION wanted by young man to keep him from starving; salary or character 

of work is immaterial; is shoemaker by trade, but is quick with his hands and 
is willing to do anything to make an honest living; best of references. Address E 29, 
this office.” 


I could fill this pamphlet with similar items, things happening 
around us every day. 

Along with these clippings, taken almost at random from the pa- 
pers which come to my table, there is another,—a letter written by 
T. O. Hearn from Pingtu, Shangtu, China. Brother Hearn wishes to 
stimulate contributions to Foreign Missions, and he tells the story of a 
Texas woman who found herself possessed of a somewhat ferocious de- 
termination to furnish a five-dollar cot to the Oxner Memorial Hos- 
pital. This good Texas lady had no means of her own. How, then, 
was she to give the poor heathen that cot? The lady herself says that 
she prevailed upon some of her neighbors to buy a few of her books 
(Christmas presents from her friends), and that she extracted a dollar 
from a gentleman whom she calls “our county missionary”; but, after 
all her efforts, she still lacked fifty cents. I will let the Texas lady re- 
fate in her own words how she secured the final contribution : 


“We have a neighbor, a poor widow woman, in ill health and living on rented 
land. She ran in to see me a few days ago, saying she knew what being sick meant, 
and that she had been wanting to give me something for a long time. Handing me 
a little package, she ran away. I opened it, and there were five yards of embroidery, 
a handkerchief, and fifty cents. That poor widow! I could not keep the tears back, 
and we all cried. I told sister I did not feel worthy to touch it, but she said that it 
would not be right to hurt her feelings by returning it; and J said I would add it to 
my cot, which would make the five dollars.” 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [75] 


AN AMERICAN GLASS FACTORY AT NIGHT 


Did you ever read anything that gave you a queerer feeling than 
the above? A Texas woman, presumably of sound mind, so hypno- 
tized by the influence of missionary propaganda that she believes she 
has won applause in heaven and on earth when she, a poor sick woman, 
has taken from another poor widowed and afflicted woman her handi- 
work and her money to buy a cot for a hospital in China! 

oo Eo 1K * 6 * ok os * 


. 


"Stung by the revelations which the /effersonians, monthly and 
weekly, have been making, the missionaries, and those who uphold the 
present system, have begun to publish articles defending it. One of 
these articles was written by the well-known journalist, Frank G. Car- 
penter. He takes up Korea, and he maintains that American money 
invested in Korean missions will earn larger dividends than when 
placed anywhere else. What does he mean by “dividends” upon mis- 
sion investments? Does he count as dividends the numbers of those 
who join the Christian churches? Apparently, that is his meaning. 
But how can he, or any one else, judge by such a criterion? After a 
century of missionary work among these simple-minded, indolent and 
effeminate Koreans, only 150,000 of them have pretended to be con- 
verted. Of these, the Catholics have 50,000. How many of the con- 
verts which.the priests corraled joined the Christian church to escape 
the crushing burden of Korean tawation? THAT WAS THE BAIT 
which tempted these very inferior people to become Christians,—why 
did Mr. Carpenter omit the mention of that fact? Is it not a most ma- 
terial fact to be considered, in passing upon the sincerity of the “Con- 


yerts?” 
The Christian religion has carried millions of dollars to Korea, 


EGR FOREIGN MISSIONS 


where the money was sadly needed. These Christian dollars have built 
splendid churches and schools for the decadent, immoral and almost 
helpless natives. Their children have been clothed, fed, housed and 
taught. In a variety of ways, they have received the benefit of Euro- 
pean and American charity. Of course, they like it. Of course, they 
want more of it. John Wanamaker, of Philadelphia and New York, 
eave the Koreans nearly $40,000 to put up a Y. M. C. A. hall. They 
are pleased with it. They now ask that we send them $15,000 for a 
Gymnasium, and $10,000 “to complete the equipment of the industrial 
establishment.” 

They also need “a few thousand dollars more to employ native men 
who have graduated from the American colleges.” 

The closing paragraph of Mr. Carpenter’s article, after mentioning 
the amounts desired for the gymnasium, the industrial school, and the 
native workers, ends with the sentence, “I know of no place where any 
investment will bring better results.” 

I had no idea that Mr. Carpenter was so unconscious of the exist- 
ence of thousands of places in his own country where an investment otf 
$15,000 would produce better results than in building a gymnasium in 
Korea, and where “a few thousand” wisely expended would do more 
good than when used to employ Korean’ college graduates to give a col- 
lege education to Korean boys and girls. 

John Wanamaker, magnificent business man and advertiser, gave 
$40,000 for a Korean Y. M. C. A. hall, and got space worth four times 
the money in all the papers! And the calculating Pharisee dwells in 
Philadelphia!!! 

Mr. Carpenter says that such sums as we send to Korea to build 
gymnasiums, industrial schools and Y. M. C. A. halls can not be better 
invested. The Hon. John Wanamaker appears to be of the same opin- 
ion. And yet the money ostentatiously sent to heathendom might find 
immensely more profitable employment in Christendom—yea, even in 
the city of Brotherly Love, wherein John Wanamaker resides. 

There are some thousands of children who go hungry to school in 
this opulent city of Brotherly Love: some go without having had a 
mouthful of »reakfast, and some go who have had but a piece of bread. 
And there are other children who can not be sent to school at all: some 
because they lack clothing, and some because their help is needed im 
the sweat-shop. 

Has John Wanamaker, the Christian millionaire, ever tried to or- 
ganize relief for the poverty-cursed children of his home city—chil- 
dren who are foredoomed to ruin, children who have no chance to be 
good, children that never heard of the Christ who loved the little ones? 
Rich Pharisee that he is, John Wanamaker, like many other million- 
aires, would rather donate his money where it will redound to his glory 
in the columns of newspapers than go quietly into the purlieus of Pial- 
adelphia, Boston. and New York and rescue some of the thousands who 
are lost in the Inferno of the slums. 

There is a mountain territory in the Southern States that is much 
jarger than New England, It embraces about 200 counties and con- 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [77] 


tains a population of 2,500,000 people. These mountain folks are cut 
off from the outside world, and civilization has not lifted them in its 
upward march. They are poor, unprogressive, illiterate. They have 
no learning, and they do not even have the modern knowledge of how 
to live. A large majority of these neglected whites occupy one-room 
cabins, miserable little shacks, not nearly so comfortable as the cow- 
house of the average cotton-grower. Their food is scanty and poor, 
consisting of beans, coarse bread, with now and then a piece of hog- 
meat. It is a region in which some barefooted, and almost barelegged, 
woman,—plowing an ox while the man of the house has taken his pack 
and gone off for a trip to the still or a hunt in the woods,—will add as 
a commentary to the traveler’s remark that “the scenery is glorious,” 
_—“YHRS,I7T’S A FINE-COUNTRY FOR MEN AND DOGS, BUT 
IT’S HELL ON WOMEN AND STEERS.” 

In these wretched mountain hovels are sad-faced mothers, and 
crowds of dirty, ragged, ignorant children—sometimes a family of fif- 
teen living in one room, with a dirt floor and no window, an abode of 
squalid poverty, degradation and sin. 

Christians of Georgia! What are you thinking about when you 
neglect these white people of your own State, and traipse off to Mexico, 
Brazil and Japan to endow sumptuous boarding schools for foreign 
boys and girls? 

The same reproach falls upon Alabama, and Tennessee, and the 
Carolinas, and Kentucky, and the two Virginias. It is an amazing 
thing that we can gloat over the magnificent and costly colleges, dor- 
mitories, hospitals, churches and schools which we are erecting in hea- 
thendom. where wealth abounds and where the people are abundantly 
able to help themselves, and can be so cruelly unsympathetic toward 
the poorer classes of our own great Caucasian race. With the million- 
aire philanthropists of the Northern States dumping their donations 
on negro schools, TO PREPARE THE BLACKS FOR INDUS- 
TRIAL COMPETITION AND SOCIAL EQUALITY WITH THE 
WHITES OF THE SOUTH, how can we Caucasians of the South 
ignore the danger to our future? What will be the conditions of our 
posterity, if we divert to secular education in the Orient the funds 
needed for the uplift of our own? Yor God’s sake, give THIS AS- 
PEOT OF THE CASE a serious thought! 

Who is it that knows to a certainty that a single Oriental has ever 
become a sincere Christian? Who is it that does not know that if these 
Eastern people will live up to their own religious creeds they will be 
good men and women—just as good as we are? 

Let us have no narrow-minded foolishness about this: ask any hon- 
est scholar and he will tell you that these Eastern peoples had a beau- 
tiful, refining and inspiring code of morality long before Christians 
met in convention to vote the adoption of these separate writings 
which constitute our Bible. 

John Wesley maintained that a heathen who lived according to the 
best light he had would be saved. Is it not the general belief, in ee 
age of intellectual freedom, that a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, or a dis- 


[78] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


ciple of Confucius, who honestly believes in the religion of his fathers 
and who does his utmost to live according to its teachings, will not be 
damned to everlasting punishment? The creeds of these people, when 
faithfully observed, make good men; and have not our very best 
preachers declared that our Christian religion means “Being good and 
doing good?” Will the Father of us all send good people to broil in 
an eternal hell? John Wesley said, “VO”/ Who will say, “YS”? 


The case of Elsie Sigel, murdered by Chinese “converts” among 
whom she had been working, has created a profound sensation, and has 
encouraged a number of churchmen to speak out in loud condemnation 
of prevailing methods. ; 

Speaking to a reporter of the New York World the Rev. Asa Black- 
burn said: 


“If the World would employ its great facilities for gathering news to obtaining 
a list of the mission girls ruined by Chinese whom they were teaching it would per- 
form a service for which all the churches would be supremely grateful. There have 
been enough cases of that kind to fill an entire page in the paper. That list would 
be read everywhere as an awful object-lesson in depravity. I believe its publication 
would so shock the country as to correct the evil at which it would aim. Nothing 
short of some such exposure will stop it. The people need to be horrified. I shall 
be in sympathy with any measure, however shocking, to save our young women from 
a continuance of this infamy, and with what feeble force I have I will speak for it.” 


Dr. Paul Wakefield, of Springfield, U1l., concurs with Dr. Black- 
burn, and makes the astounding admission that “We Missionaries have 
known this for along time and were not surprised when we heard of 
Miss Sigel’s tragic death.” 

What was it that “We Missionaries have known for a long time”, 
and would not tell until one poor white girl was brutally choked to 
death by Chinese “Converts” ? 

They Anew that mission work among these Oriental heathen was 
fraught with peril to the virtue of the Christian girls who were de- 
tailed for the work. They new that Chinese men were pretending to 
study the Bible to get the chance to seduce the Christian girls. 

They knew it—*We Missionaries” did—and they did not tell it! 
They did not warn the girls, did not warn the parents of the girls, did 
not alarth the great Christian world where Public Sentiment, once 
aroused, might have applied the hot iron to the evil. 

Said Dr. Wakefield: “There are more women missionaries degraded 
by Chinese men than there are Chinese converted. We Missionaries 
have known this for a long time.” 

AND THEY WOULDN’T SPEAK OUT! 

That is the most abominable feature of the whole ghastly business. 
It makes the Christian Missionaries parties to the crimes. They knew 
that lecherous Chinamen were posing as’ Bible students for the purpose 
of degrading the women Missionaries. They knew that these wolves in 
sheep’s clothing were devouring Caucasian girls. Yet these Caucasian 
Ministers of the Gospel were so fanatical for mission work, and so 
afraid that a knowledge of the truth might lessen the Missionary con- 


dVNS LAOS V ALVIONUdd VY NUHLVaAH AHL 


2 335u4 


WSIHJalvo 


BUHL NOVA TNE |i See | ayiissisws 
YNIHL I NOI SMAY | ae BNOW | 3YUOW 
MISHLSayit 3H oa : 

 UACNOM ON 4a BA NOAA 


; 


[80] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


tributions of American dupes, that they were silent while a system 
which might have put your daughter in Elsie Sigel’s place, was in full 
blast. How do you know what secrets they are concealing in the for- 
eign work? If they hide such terrible conditions from you, here at 
home, what is it that they could not hide in China, Japan and India? 
Oh, the horror and the shame of it!, 
~ Miss Helen Clark, Director of one of the Missions, said: 

“For seventeen years I have urged the folly of white women endeavoring to 
Christianize Chinamen. All about me I have seen the ruin and wrecked homes. Case 
after case that parallels Elsie Sigel’s, with the exception of its tragic termination. 


But even so, death is better than some things. I have believed from the very begin- 
ning that it was impossible for white women to properly influence Chinese men.” 


The Elsie Sigel case, like the lightning flash in the dark, revealed 
the whole world of mission work among the heathen in the home field. 
How is it, abroad? Are the Orientals in the East different from the 
Orientals who come West? Is a Chinaman in New York or San Fran- 
cisco any worse than a Chinaman in China? Do these Chinese “Con- 
verts” ever use the religious cloak to do wrong in China? You do not 
know. A lightning flash may come some day which will cause “We 
Missionaries” to let that cat out of the bag, also.* 

Men who are so fanatical, so dead to the promptings of right, that 
they deliberately concealed from us the knowledge that Chinese “Con- 
verts” were systematically corrupting the women Missionaries are ca- 
pable of concealing anything. You are left to believe that “We Mis- 
sionaries” never would have revealed the hideous facts had not Elsie 
Sigel’s murder been discovered and traced to several of her Chinese 


“Converts”. 
CHAPTER V. 


WEST VIRGINIA lady has been deeply grieved by the criti- 
cisms which the Jeffersonian has leveled at the modern mission- 
ary methods. 

Miss Janet Hay Houston appears for the defense. She herself has 
been a missionary for twenty-five years. Her father, Rev. S. R. 
Houston, D. D., “gave his first strength” to mission work in the Orient. 
Other members of her family have labored as evangels of Christ in 
Africa, Asia and Oceanica. Consequently, Janet Hay Houston has 
good grounds for saying that she knows whereof she speaks, when she 
defends the system which I have been assailing. ; 

Her letter impresses one as being thoroughly honest and earnest. It 
reveals clearly the point of view of missionary enthusiasts, and dis- 
closes the morbid sentiment which inspires so much of this foreign ef- 
fort. It furnishes striking evidence of the tendency which undis- 
ciplined religious zeal has ever had to produce the abnormal state of 
mind and the freakish line of conduct. The monk who gloried in his 
haircloth shirt and filthy person; the Simeon Stylites roosting day and 
night, year in and year out, on his lofty pillar; the fakir who thinks 
it increases his holiness to let his fingernails grow a foot long, while 


*It has come! Dr. August Bach, a ‘Mission worker of !twelve years’ experience in China, ‘has de- 
nounced the prevailing methods and has declared that there are Elsie Sigel cases in China. 


, 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [81] 


dirt covers his body with its coat of 
mail; the fanatic who sacrifices his 
own child upon the altar of supposed 
religious duty;—these are a few ex- 
amples of what happens to poor, weak 
mortals. when the mind has been 
warped out of sane, healthy symmetry 
by the cult of some specialty—the 
brooding upon one idea. To show how 
completely Janet Hay Houston and 
some of her friends have left the 
beaten track and become extremists, I 
take the liberty of prefacing her ar- 
ticle with the letter in which she re- 
quests its publication : 


“Dear Mr. Warson:—I enclose my an- 
swer to some of your views on Foreign Mis- 
sions. Please print it entire in the Magazine, 
and in as large portions as possible in the 
Weekly. ; 

“Some of your warmest friends, political- 
ly, are beginning to hang their heads for your 
stand on Foreign Missions. One good Popu- 
list sister said to me today: ‘Something 
dreadful will happen to Mr. Watson for the 
things he is saying. He will die like Herod— 
eaten of worms” Sincerely, Miss JANET 
Houston, Monitor, W. Va.” 


We are living in the Twentieth 
Century, and we flatter ourselves that 
we are emancipated from ignorance 
and superstition; yet here are two in- 
telligent American ladies who seem to 
believe that I shall perish premature- 
ly, and terribly, for giving expression 
to honest convictions on a matter 
which affords ample room for differences of opinion. 

But enough of preliminary: let us now read what Miss Houston 
has to say about 


A TYPICAL “LITTLE MOTHER” 


FOREIGN MISSIONS 


“The cause that has you, Mr. Watson, for its champion is most fortunate. And 
it is equally true that the cause that has your disapprobation is most unfortunate, 
for one and the same reason—you are not only fearless but you are honest. 

“Tt has been, therefore, with considerable distress I have read your articles on 
Foreign Missions extending through six months or more of your issues. 

“Belonging to a family whose history can be said to be coincident with that of 
Foreign Missions for a century, I claim some right to a certain knowledge of the sub- 
ject. In the early thirties of the last century my father, Rev. 8. R. Houston, D. D., 
gave his first strength to Foreign Missions in Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt and Jands 


contiguous, 


[82] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


“Rev. M. H. Houston, D. D., later gave unusual gifts of intellect to a long service 
in China, 

“The white headstone at the grave of young Samuel Lasley on the banks of the 
Congo did its great share in the opening of the great Congo region to the humanity 
of missions. Laying its hand at the present speaking on the cruel, iniquitous work 
of Leopold of Belgium in the rubber trade. 

“For nearly thirty years I have personally been in connection with foreign mis- 
sion work in both Mexico and Cuba, not to mention other younger and stronger spir- 
its of our family who are actually at work in China, Japan and Cuba. For these 
things I claim a right to speak intelligently on the subject. 

“Your first article on Foreign Missions, I believe, appeared in the Weekly of 
December 17, 1908, under the heading, ‘By What Right? In it you ask ‘By what 
moral right do we educate heathen children, when our own little ones are slaving out 
their lives in the mill, or in the field or in the sweat-shop? ‘The American dollar 
that goes abroad to buy food, raiment, fuel, medicine and school books for the chil- 
dren of heathen peoples is a dollar that is misapplied,’ ete. 

“You are not opposed to Foreign Missions, for later in the MAGAZINE of April, 
1909, you say, ‘We hope that our position will not be misunderstood nor misrepre- 
sented—we heartily favor Foreign Missions. But you want it ‘limited to preaching 
the Gospel.—MaGazineE January, 1909. 

“It may be gratifying to you to learn that for the last decade or more there has 
been a steady trend against indiscriminate use of foreign money on mission ground. 
In the first days of foreign mission work, when the church confronted the appalling 
helplessness of paganism, it was most natural that her sympathies stretched out on 
every line of help. I can just imagine what you would have done, Mr. Watson, 
standing amid the child-widows of India, the wailing of the foot-boun1 children of 
China or looking into the terrified faces of African women as they taced a living 
grave. Oh, what billions of money such a big heart as yours would have wasted on 
Foreign Missions! 

“The sympathies of the church are just as tender today, but as to the use of for- 
eign money in mission fields, there is a united effort to put it in where it propagates 
self-help. ; 

“Why schools? Why hospitals? If I was walking by a river and saw a mob of 
men throw a man bound hand and foot into the water, and contrived to rescue him; 
after I got him out what would I do with him? Cut his bonds and leave him to the 
mob? You say preach the Gospel and there the church’s duty ends. Christ preached 
the Gospel but He also healed and fed. 

“To know the real spirit of boycotting one has to see a convert to Christianity 
among pagans. It extends to every function of his being. The Roman Catholic 
apostate when excommunicated is cursed in the entirety of that church’s anathema. 
Every organ of his body is enumerated in the gruesome curses pronounced 
by the priest in the public hearing of his assembled fellows. In pagan lands the 
same thing occurs—converts become objects of hate and dread. What are you going 
to do with these helpless objects of hate? If they are sick, you must care for them. 
If hungry, you must feed them. If helpless, you must equip them for life’s battle. 
Hence hospitals and schools, especially industrial schools. 

“The sine qua non of entrance to many mission schools in China is unbound 
feet. That alone would justify their existence. Mr. Watson, you would not need to 
stand but half an hour in a Chinese community, listening to the wails of the little 
girls of China over their bound, festering feet, to convert you to schools, for girls at 
least, there. 1 would give you just a quarter of an hour for a similar conversion to 
the necessity of schools in India if you could visit professionally with a woman doc- 
tor among the child-widows of India, whose condition only devils could originate. 

“I think you have lost sight of the fact that missions and mission money exist 
not to enrich or upbuild heathen nations as such, but FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT 
OF THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST, of which eventually some part of ‘every nation’ 
shall form an integral part.—Rey. 5:9. 

“Yet true mission work does not expatriate its converts. Rather it endeavors to 
give them back, regenerated, to each several people, to ‘leaven the whole lump.’ 

“You base your claim for your method of carrying on Foreign Missions on what 


FOREIGN MISSIONS. [83] 


Christ said to His disciples before His ascension. You say in your MaGazIne for 
April, 1909, ‘What does the Bible command us Christians to do? Jesus issued the 
order, ‘Go among the heathen and preach to them.’ ‘Carry neither scrip nor purse.’ 
What Christ said to His disciples on foreign missions just before His ascension, 
which you quote as final, was a mere codicil to what He had been teaching them 
through three years. He had told in their hearing the parable of the Good Samari- 
tan—Luke 10:25-37, in which a good deal of Samaritan money and hospital work 
is expended on the Jew. And they had heard Him in conclusion, ‘GO THOU AND 
DO LIKEWISE,’ 

“They, too, had seen their Master three years ‘GOING ABOUT DOING GOOD’, 
stretching out the same loving hand to feed and to heal as well as to save, and we 
-find that they learned their lesson well. Feeding, healing and saving seem to have 
been the genius of their method. And its necessity was later recognized by St. Paul, 
who in the rigors of the shipwreck counseled the crew to eat, and later reaching the 
Island of Melita healed Publius and ‘others also which had diseases in the island’.— 
Acts 28:9. 

“He who said at one time ‘carry neither scrip nor purse’ also said to the same 
disciples at another, ‘Now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his 
scrip’, etc—Luke 22:35-36. 

“The parallel you run for the church’s work in foreign lands with the mission 
work of St. Paul loses its force when the character of the two fields is contrasted. 
St. Paul’s mission work lay in Jewish colonies and among the cultured Greeks and 
Romans of his day, all of which were already possessed. of just such secular learn- 
ing as Jerusalem could have offered them. There was absolutely no call for schools or 
other environment for His converts than were already in their reach. Remember, Mr. 
Watson, the mission field in Paul’s day was pagan, but it was civilized. The intel- 
lectual culture in some places was in some respects higher than that of the Jewish. 
And the Jewish colonies, which so largely predominate in Paul’s mission field, were 
already trained im all the moral teachings of the Jews. 

“Tf Paul had presumed to establish secular schools in Athens, Rome or Corinth, 
it would have been ‘taking coals to Newcastle’. Possessed of learning, what they 
needed was the simple Gospel. Compare for one instant the Congo tribes with the 
Athenians, or the Chinese with the Corinthians, and you will see as a parallel for our 
modern mission work it is worth nothing. 

“You will perhaps be surprised to know that those individuals and churches that 
are wasting most money on Foreign Missions are the chief supporters of Home Mis- 
sion work. This is a fact that has only to be investigated to be proved. The loudest 
anti-Foreign Mission talker does little or nothing for Home Missions, while those 
interested in the salvation of the world are always alive to the needy at their door. 
Many a church that has thought it could not spare anything abroad, after being 
induced to give to Foreign Missions, has found out it has more for home calls. This 
is only one of the many seeming paradoxes of our Christian religion. “There is that 
seattereth and yet increaseth.—Proverbs 11:24. 

“Tf you desire Home Missions to flourish, beware and do not cut the taproot of 
Foreign Missions in the churches. 

“T am not quite sure, Mr. Watson, of your sympathy in any degree with Foreign 
Missions. Else you could not have written such a paragraph as this: 

“To teach and preach abroad is about the same now as teaching and preaching 
here. To run the hospital and boss the commissary is no more fatiguing in South 
America and the Orient than it is in Europe or America. Dearly beloved! Don’t 
weep any more over the hard life of the foreign missionary. The chances are that 
he is having a much better time than yourself. He wears up-to-date habiliments, 
lives on appetizing viands, has comfortable and roomy quarters, smokes good cigars 
when he wants to, and has a corking time generally” May Macazine, 1909. 

“If you were in possession of a handful of facts that any missionary could give 
you, you would blush at your ignorance and weep over your cruelty ! 

“Missionaries as a class are not given to magnifying their difficulties. Most of 
them, like Paul, object thus ‘to speak as a fool’. P 

“Hunt up a book called ‘The Bishop’s Conversion’, and read it. 1t will answer 


[84] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


you better than I can. You can find a copy in the library of Westminster Presby- 
terian Church, in your city. 

“J am not surprised you have reached some of your conclusions when your in- 
formants supplied you with such statements as this: ‘When the rations to the con- 
verts were cut off the converts lost interest in the Christian faith” This ‘noble man’, 
as you call him, should have been recalled in his early work for lending his help to 
such unworthy methods of work. He seems fo be quite ‘out of it’ and has not even 
by the hearing of the ear participated in the modern chapters of mission work that 
have furnished sublime martyr heroism in native converts in China, India, Mada- 
gascar, Africa, Japan, Mexico and other lands, where men and women are already 
enrolled in the glorious company of the martyrs. 

“You say the heroic age of missions is past. Is it a grievance to you, Mr. Wat- 
son, that our missionaries no longer cross the seas in ill-smelling schooners? And 
that they can in some places lengthen life and save church money by getting some 
of the comforts of life in food and houses? Do we Protestants believe there is virtue 
in physical suffering? 

“Tt will be gratifying to you to know that there are still some chances for the 
missionary to be eaten of cannibals; that civilization can not reduce the temperature 
of India’s suns or greatly lessen the probabilities of hematuric fever on the Congo. 
Fine opportunities still exist to be poisoned in several fields in South America and 
Mexico, to say nothing of the joys of expatriation spent in years of service any- 
where in Christless lands; in an environment of darkness, mental, moral and social, 
that has to be felt to be understood; one week of which would revolutionize your 
theories of missions and missionaries and convert you to an ardent crusade just the 
opposite of the one you have recently come out on. 

“TY would urge you, Mr. Watson, in your own words, to ‘stir the question! EX- 
AMINE BOTH SIDES’—April MaGazineE, 1909. For I am quite sure of gaining a 
red-hot partisan for missions as they are now carried on by experienced, godly men 
in all the evangelical churches. 

“JANET Hay Houston, 
“Missionary to Mexico and Cuba through more: than twenty-five years, and still in 
the work.” 


What are we to think, when a lady of a high order of intelligence— 
a lady who is consecrating her life to the moral and spiritual better- 
ment of her fellow creatures—tells us, seriously and deliberately, that 
the work of abolishing the Chinese custom of binding the feet of young 
girls would of itself justify modern missionary methods? 

As I understand it, the common people of China do not practice the 
habit of compressing the feet of their daughters. The rich people do 
that,—those who constitute Society and who go in for style. Why 
should the people of this country send missionaries to China to change 
the fashions there? Good heavens! have our Society folks got no bad 
habits? Did Miss Houston read the testimony of Howard Gould’s 
wife in the divorce case, and reflect upon what that Society queen had 
to say about high life among our fashionable rich? Has Miss Hous- 
ton no concern for the whisky drinking and gambling that have be- 
come the fashion with our Smart Set? Or for evils of high-heeled 
shoes, and decollette gowns? Do our girls never compress their little 
tootsy-wootsies? Or catch the cold which leads to pneumonia or con- 
sumption, by going to social functions half-naked ? 

The artificial production of small feet in China is prescribed by 
social convention: have we no conventionalities, unwritten but uni- 
versal and inexorable, that do our girls and women more harm than is 


/ 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [85 | 


done Chinese girls by compressing their feet? Whether we have or 
not, it is certainly a queer construction of Christ’s commands as to 
Foreign Missions to say, that it is a religious duty of ours to go abroad 
among the nations that we class as pagan, and take their feet into our 
prayers, meditations, contributions and pious ministrations. 

There are no vital organs in the foot, and the abuse of it by tight 
shoes or cruel bandages does not entail any disastrous consequences 
upon the children,—does not strike at the future 
well-being of the race. But with us Christians 
in America, the unrelenting laws of fashion not 
only victimize the women, but visit their evils 
upon the children. 

Fashion demands the small round waist, and 
our stylish ladies do their level best, braving 
the tortures of the corset, to make themselves re- 
semble two-legged hour-glasses. Nature never 
gave a well-made woman a round waist, nor a 
small one. God intended the child-bearer to 
have room for the vital organs,—for the facile 
performance of her sex-duty of perpetuating 
the race. The Chinese custom which excites TH® MODERN IDEAL 
so much horror in Miss Houston, does not in FORM,” FROM AN 
any degree interfere with the functions of moth- ADVERTISEMENT 
erhood. But the European custom of corset — Life and Health Magazine 
wearing compresses the liver, contracts the ribs, 
obstructs healthy respiration, and presses the stomach down on the in- 
testines. As stated in a recent number of the most excellent magazine, 
Life and Health, “God put the stom- 
ach between the ribs. Women have 
crowded it down among the lower ab- 
dominal viscera.” 

_ Here involved, are the vital organs 
upon which the whole future of our 
race is dependent,—yet Miss Houston 
expresses no concern for her white 
sisters who are the victims of this 

: 4 3 murderous social convention, but is 

I. NORMAL FIGURE passionately sympathetic with the hit- 

Ceres oR tle yellow damsels whose feet are 

See Y RODUCED IBY being squeezed, in conformity with a 

a esas vicious canon of Chinese fashion! Is 

—Life and Health Magazine jt, not astonishing? Is it not lamenta- 

ble? These missionary enthusiasts can discern a gnat on a barndoor in 

heathendom, but can’t see the barn itself, if it happens to be located in 
Christendom. 

A prominent physician, quoted by Life and Health, says that the 
manner in which fashion compels ladies to dress, “affects injuriously 
the health of fifty or sixty millions of people, physically, mentally, and 
morally”. 


[86] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


One of the most beautiful women I ever knew, a slave to fashion, 
died in child-birth, from no other cause than that her style of dress had 
made it impossible for Nature to perform its office at the crisis of her 
life. How many such tragedies result from our fashionable customs? 
Let Miss Houston have a confidential talk with some old family doc- 
tor: he will open her eyes. 

The savage woman, who has worn little or no clothing, bears her 
child with about as much ease as the average cow calves. She pays no 
awful penalty of pain for perpetuating her species—for doing that 
which God formed her to do. Vo Savage nation demands of its women 
obedience to a “Style” which makes motherhood a martyrdom. No 
heathen nation does it. We Christians do it, persisting in the frightful 
system which curses both mother and children—and our merciful re- 
formers betake themselves to heathen lands to alter usage less harmful 
than some which they leave behind. China is not 
threatened with Race Suicide—nor is Japan, A fri- 
ca, or Hindustan. It is Christendom which is 
menaced by that peril, if any part of the world is. 
And why? Because the women of our fashionable 
classes refuse to mother large families. And again, 
why? Because of the danger to the lives of the 
women, and because large families interfere with 
social dissipations. J¢ is the poor whites of Eu- 
rope and America that are propagating the Cau- 
casian race. If that duty devolved upon the rich 
and the fashionable only, there would, indeed, be 
danger of Race Suicide. 


Has Miss Houston ever given any attention to 
infant mortality in this Christian land of ours? 
Let me suggest that she read up on that subject. 
When she has learned of the almost incredible 
number of infants, owr babies, that perish for lack T#= “StRarcur Front” 
of fresh air, of pure milk, of intelligent treatment, te ee eee 
she will be appalled. Think of our letting more than 500,000 of the i in- 
fants annually wilt and wither and die, right before our eyes, suffo- 
cated by the heat, frozen by the cold, poiconed by impure air and food. 
Oh, the warped, perverted sense of Christian duty which banishes from 
among us such noble women as Janet Houston, when humanity cries 
for them so piteously in every American city! 

The bound, festering feet are very painful, no doubt; but what of 
the festering eyes occasioned as the direct result of the “social evil” 
here? Called by the polite name of ophthalmia neonatorum, but in real- 
ity, gonorrheal infection, thousands of babies are literally blinded at 
birth. Some of these are saved from this horrible fate by medical 
science, hut it is only recently that this has been done; and the record 
would reach into millions of white- eyeballed, sightless wretches, if the 
further awful record of infant mortality did not keep the statistics of 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [87] 


preventable blindness down. That is, preventable by wiping out pros- 
titution, which is the greatest curse to our land today. Our “red-light” 
districts reek with loathsome disease, our heedless boys and vicious men - 
become infected and, in turn, infect innocent wives and damn at birth 
their innocent children. 

Does Miss Houston know the gynecological statistics of the United 
States? Does she know the invalids and the surgical butcheries made 
necessary because the innocent woman suffers, along with the prosti- 
tute, the invasion of a pus-producing germ that is communicated 
through the spread of the malignant gonococci ? 


® 


Miss Houston commiserates the sad lot of the “child-widows” of 
India. Here we have another National custom. Puberty is reached 
at a very early age among Hindus,—so much so that marriages are con- 
summated when 
some of the wives 
appear to us to be 
nothing more than 
children. The Eng- 
lish put a stop to the 
sacrifice of her hfe 
at the funeral of her 
lord. But, thus far, 
the English have 
been afraid to inter- 
fere with the Hindu 
marriage customs. 
American women 
seem to be more con- 
cerned about them 
than anybody else. 
These well-meaning 
ladies might easily 
all the home- 
employment they need, if they would make their investigations in their 
own country. We ourselves have child-wives and “child-widows”. 
Worse yet, we have middle-aged and elderly widows, poor and friend- 
less, whose lot is so dreadfully hard that nothing in Hindustan could 
be worse,—the sweat-shop widow, plying the needle all day long, every 
day in the year, to get the bread to fill the mouths of the hungry little 
brood of children; the factory widow, whose life is a dull round of 
hopeless toil—herself dragged down by unmerciful poverty, and her 
children submerged with her. 

To convince Miss Houston that there are child-widows in her home- 
land whose poverty may plunge them into deeper perdition than India 
knows, I take an extract from a pamphlet on the White Slave traflic, 
prepared by Harry A. Parkin, Assistant District Attorney, Chicago: 


SWEAT-SHOP LABOR ON POSTAL UNIFORMS 
From ‘‘ White Slavery ”’ find 


[88] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


“A very few days ago this pitiful case was, in an official way, brought to my at- 
tention. A little German girl in Buffalo married a man who deserted her about the 
time her child was born. Her baby is now about eight months old. Almost imme- 
diately after her husband ran away she formed the acquaintance of an* engaging 
young man who claimed to take deep interest in her welfare, and that of a certain 
girl friend of hers. He persuaded them both that if they would accompany him to Chi- 
cago he would immediately place them in employment which would be far more prof- 
itable than anything they could obtain in Buffalo. Supposing that the work await- 
ing her was entirely legitimate and respectable, the little mother took her baby and, 
in company with the young man and her friend, came to Chicago. The next task of 
this human fiend was to persuade this ‘child-widow’ that it would be necessary for 
her to place her baby temporarily in a foundling’s home in order that it might not 
interfere with her employment. This accomplished, he took the two young women at 
once to a notorious house and sold them into white slavery. Thenceforth this fellow 
has lived in luxury upon the shameful earnings of these two victims. The young 
mother has attempted by every means imaginable to escape from his clutches and at 
last has importuned him into a promise to release his hold upon her on the payment 
of $300. She is still ‘working out’ the price of her release. It is scarcely too much 
to say that she looks twice her age.” 


I earnestly beseech Miss Houston to write for information to The 
Woman’s World newspaper, of St. Louis, or to Edward W. Sims, U. S. 
District Attorney, Chicago. If the facts which she will thus have 
learned do not cause her to dedicate the remainder of her beautiful life 
to the rescue of her Christian sisters from the hell-holes of our Christ- 
ian cities, it will be a marvel. 


While Miss Houston and others inspired by similar motives have 
been “saving China for Christ”, and worrying about the usual and cus- 
tomary condition of the Chinese girls of high degree, it has remained 
for the civil authorities to haul up sharply the “Mission Homes” which, 
in America, receive the young immigrant girls, and 75 per cent. of 
whom, according to the published statement of U. S. Commissioner 
Williams, have been engaged in the holy practice of enveigling these 
girls from the espionage of the officials, under plea of caring for them 
in pious surroundings, and then selling them to vile dens at from $10 to 
$15 apiece! How can Miss Houston claim that these missionaries are all 
fired with evangelical motives, when the condition of affairs in the mis- 
sions of New York has just been exposed as one of the most unnatural 
and hideous schemes of pandering ever invented ? 

And, while young girls from other lands are bestialized by American 
brutes, our own girls are sent to Panama and other points for the same 
purpose. 

Some weeks ago a negro who signed himself “John Frankling” 
wrote me from Tifton, Ga., a letter in which he stated that he had a 
white wife whom he had bought out of a group of twenty-five that 
were offered for sale in Chicago, and that she was the third white 
“wife” that he had purchased. Upon making inquiry of prominent 
men in Chicago, I was told that there was reason to believe that the 
negro had told the truth. There is a startling corroboration of Frank- 
ling’s statement furnished by Mrs. Ophelia Amigh, Superintendent Il 
linois Training School for Girls. She writes: 


(UaALVM-VOGOS AHL SNIODNYG—NINU 40 ADVIS Lal HAL 


[90] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


“Almost at the beginning of my experience I received a penciled note which I 
have kept on my desk as a stimulus to my energies and my watchfulness along the 
line of checkmating the work of the white alavers, It is very brief and terse—but 
what a story it tells! Here is a copy of it—with the substitution of a fictitious 
name: 

; “Ellen Holmes has been sold for $50.00 to 
Madame Blank’s house at -+— Armour avenue.’ 

“The statement was true—and the man who sold her and the woman who bought 

her were both sent to the State penitentiary as a penalty for the transaction!” 


Again: 


“The disgraceful facts are these: 

“Some sixty-five thousand daughters of American homes and fifteen thousand 
alien girls are the prey each year of procurers in this traffic, according to authorita- 
tive estimates. Even marriage is used as one of the diabolical methods of capturing 
girlhood and young womanhood and ‘breaking them in’ to a life of shame. 

“They are hunted, trapped in a thousand ways; trapped, wing-broken, sold— 
sold for less than hogs!—and held in white slavery worse than death. 

“The daughters of all of us, our sisters, even our wives are looked upon as prey 
for the white slave traffic.” 


Inexperienced country girls, lured to the cities by promises of good 
positions ; heedless and impulsive girls, trapped into run-away fake 
marriages; trustful city girls, who visit ice-cream parlors and unsus- 
pectingly eat or drink that which has been “fixed” for their ruin; for- 
elgn girls, who land in this country and find themselves among the 
ravening wolves that are ever on the prowl,—these are typical victims 
of the white slaver. Once decoyed into the house of prostitution, there 
is no escape. 

In those dens of horror they are sold to all men who can pay the 
price—young men or old, clean or unclean, healthy and diseased, black 
or white. Hope dies, youth fades, strength departs, cocaine and whis- 
_ky fold the once lovely and innocent girl in their tightening coils, and 
the poor hideous hag,—no longer fit for the business,—is drugged, and 
shoved into outer darkness, hol her place filled with another aps 
victim, and another and another! 

ier our noble Christian women can rest in peace while this dia- 
bolical traffic is going on; how it is that they can go gadding about the 
foreign world, ministering to black women in Africa, brown women in 
Hindustan and yellow women in China,—when there is so much of 
agonizing tragedy at their own doors, is difficult to understand. 

It is a horrible thing when you think of it—that your own sister or 
daughter, going to pay a visit to some friend in one of our big cities, 
might, out of sheer lack of experience and suspicion, disappear from 
your life forever, or be rescued in some chance police-raid and be re- 
turned to .you in such plight that yowd rather see her in her grave. 

Mrs. Ophelia Amigh writes: 


“As one whose daily duty it is to deal with wayward and fallen girls, as one 
who has had to dig down into the sordid and revolting details of thousands of these 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [91] 


sad cases (for I have spent the best part of my life in this line of work), let me say 
to such mothers: 

“In this day and age of the world no young girl is safe! And all young girls 
who are not surrounded by the alert, constant and intelligent protection of those who 
love them unselfishly are in imminent and deadly peril. ‘And the more beautiful and 
attractive they are, the greater is their peril!” 


Giving the history of a typical case, Hon. E. W. Sims writes: 


“Among the ‘white slaves’ captured in raids since the appearance of my first ar- 
ticle is a girl who is now about eighteen years of age. Her home was in France, 
and when she was only fourteen years old she was approached by a ‘white slaver’ 
who promised her employment in America as a lady’s maid or companion. The wage 
offered was far beyond what she could expect to get in her own country—but far more 
alluring to her than the money she could earn was the picture of the life which 
would be hers in free America. Her surroundings would be luxurious; she would be 
the constant recipient of gifts of dainty clothing from her mistress, and even the 
hardest work she would be called upon to do would be in itself a pleasure and an 
excitement. 

“Qn arriving in Chicago she was taken to the house of ill-fame to which she had 
been sold by the procurer. There this child of fourteen was quickly and unceremo- 
niously ‘broken in’ to the hideous life of depravity for which she had been entrapped. 
The white slaver who sold her was able to drive a most profitable bargain, for she 
was rated as uncommonly attractive. In fact, he made her life of shame a perpetual 
source of income, and when—not long ago—he was captured and indicted for the im- 
portation of other girls, this girl was used as the agency of providing him with 
$2,000 for his defense. 

“But let us look for a moment at the mentionable facts of this child’s daily rou- 
tine of life and see if such an existence justifies the use of the term ‘slavery’. After 
she had furnished a night of servitude to the brutal passions of vile frequenters of 
the place, she was compelled each morning to put off her tawdry costume, array 
herself in the garb of a scrub-woman and, on her hands and knees, scrub the house 
from top to bottom. No weariness, no exhaustion, ever excused her from this drudg- 
ery, which was a full day’s work for a strong woman. 

“After her scrubbing was done she was allowed to go to her chamber and sleep— 
locked in her room to prevent her possible escape—until the orgies of the next day, 
or rather night, began. She was allowed no liberties, no freedom, and in the two and 
a half years of her slavery in this house she was not even given one dollar to spend 
for her own comfort or pleasure. The legal evidence collected shows that during this 
period of slavery she earned for those who owned her not less than $8,000.” 


For the purpose of arousing the authorities in Canada, and secur- 
ing their co-operation with American officials and organizations, the 
evidence, covering “innumerable cases”, was formally presented. 

I select these as fair examples: 


“In response to a newspaper advertisement a young girl from Eastern Ontario 
eame to work, as she was led to believe, in Mrs. M.’s millinery store. Her family 
grew anxious about her, and her brother came to the town where she was supposed 
~ to be, inquiring for Mrs. M.’s millinery store. The men on the street laughed at him, 
and finally a person out of pity informed the young man that Mrs. M.’s was a house 
of prostitution. The young man learned that his sister had died from that house and 
had been buried some weeks before. 

“An attraetive woman agent spent some time at a leading hotel in a Canadian 
city. She professed to be greatly attracted by Canadian girls and advertised for a 
number of them to fill positions in one of the cities of the United States. She suc- 
ceeded in inducing four young women to go with her. Three of them have not been 


[92] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


THE LAST STAGE—MENTAL, PHYSICAL AND MORAL RUIN 


heard of since. The other was found in a den of iniquity, and returned home broken 
in health. 

“A graduate of Toronto University replied to an advertisement for a traveling 
companion. By correspondence an attractive offer was made and she came to To- 
ronto under arrangements to meet her employer. Her friends, not hearing from her, 
followed her to the city, to find that the address given in the letters was a vacant 
lot. The young lady has never been heard from since. 

“A young woman from an Ontario town came to Toronto to visit her aunt. Hay- 
ing been in the city before she did not notify her aunt of her coming. Arriving at 
the house she found her relatives absent. An attractive looking woman a few doors 
away made inquiry, and learning the young woman’s disappointment invited her into 
her house to wait until her aunt returned. She pressed her to remain for tea and to 
stay all night. In this case again the young woman discovered to her horror that 
she was the unsuspecting victim of the White Slave Traflic. 


THE RUNAWAY MARRIAGE SCHEME 


“The runaway marriage is one of the favorite devices of the White Slaver. Two 
sisters went from an Ontario village to the city of Winnipeg. A young man began 
to pay attention to one of the sisters, frequently taking her out driving and to public 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [93] 


LITTLE TENEMENT TOILERS IN AMERICA 
With the exception of the infant in arms, these are all working children 


gatherings and places of amusement. By his devoted and continual attention their 
friendship continued. One evening the sister went out with the young man and did 
not return. A business man, possessed of means, who was a friend of the young 
woman, declared he would find her; and, going to Chicago, he went from house to 
house in the red light district until he found the unfortunate girl.” 


This pamphlet could be filled with similar cases, and even then the 
hideousness of the devilish traffic would not be laid bare. The worst of 
the facts can not be printed. 

If the depravity which goes to the extent of forcing women 
to practice sodomy, in public, in the big cities, is too great 
to be coped with, too terrifying to be mentioned, then the mis- 
sionaries might begin with smaller places, like Atlanta, for instance, 
where there seems to be a tolerably well established system of white 
slave traffic to seize upon the unsophisticated young girl from the ru- 
ral districts. Surely Miss Houston knows that such girls are sent from 
place to place, as their freshness palls, until nothing remains but the 
murkiest resorts of the slums. If but a few of these hapless girls could 
be saved, no doubt the Lord would not withhold the crown of glory 
from those who interposed between them and hell, and saved society 
from just that much further contamination. 

Oh, Miss Houston! Your generous soul expands with sorrow for 
the black women of Africa who are buried alive at the funeral of some 
powerful chief,—but isn't the doom of the white girls, sold into loath- 
some slavery to negro brutes, infinitely worse? To those African 
women—only a few at that—death comes just once, and then all is 
peace and rest. But to your white sisters, caged in the vile dens of 
prostitution, comes every day something more horrible than death. 

Pe * * “ke * * * * * 


[94] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


Miss Houston endeavors to demonstrate that had the apostles estab- 
lished secular or literary schools in Rome or Syria or Greece, it would 
have been a case of “carrying coals to Newcastle”. Not at all. Only 
the upper classes in the Roman empire were educated. There were 
millions of unlettered men in the regions where the Apostles pushed 
their conquests. In fact, it was among the poor and the ignorant, the 
slaves and the proletariat, that Christianity first got its foothold. This 
is notoriously true. Why, then, did the early missionaries establish no 
schools, no colleges, no hospitals, no dispensaries? Because there was 
no scriptural authority for it. 

Does not Miss Houston recognize it as a “case of carrying coals to 
Newcastle”, when we send missionaries to Europe to found schools and 
colleges? Or when we enter Japan to compete with the splendid fa- 
cilities for education which that empire offers to all her children? Or 
when we establish in China the Missionary school to compete with the 
Government school? Or when we offer an absolutely free education to 
Hindu children who can get all the schooling they want from the Eng- 
lish, whenever the parents of the children show a willingness to co- 
operate with the English and bear a proportion of the expense? 

It is a sin and a shame—a burning wrong and disgrace—that we 
should be forcing these Missionary schools upon the alleged heathen 
when we need them so badly for millions of our own boys and girls. 
Miss Houston’s own labors have been principally in Cuba and Mexico, 
Christian countries, both. For hundreds of years\ they have been 
Christian, just as Europe is Christian, and just as Armenia is Christ- 
ian. It is certainly a phenomenal state of affairs, when the churches 
of this country are asked to put up the cash for missionary work among 


NEW YORK CELLAR PRISONERS 


Illegally employed, they were never allowed to go out of doors, their only recreation being taken in a 
dark, filthy cellar 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [95] 


peoples who have been Christianized for ages. Armenia was “won for 
Christ” more than eighteen hundred years ago, and yet we must fur- 
nish money for missionary preachers, schools and colleges in Armenia ! 

“We must win Mexico for Christ”, say the Protestants, and we send 
missionaries to do it. “We must win the United States for Christ!” 
say the Catholics, and they send missionaries to do it. 

And the Protestants are not winning Mexicg nearly so fast as the 
Catholics are winning the United States. (It must be a sad puzzle to 
the heathen to tell which Christian sect is the real thing.) 

The Christian missionaries claim that they have hundreds of thou- 
sands of converts in heathendom. -If this be true, why are not con- 
verts numerous enough to spread the Gospel among their own people? 
Why not let them establish the endless chain system, one convert work- 
ing to make another, one church to establish another, as was the case in 
the pioneer days of Christianity? For three hundred years mission- 
aries have been at work in China—isn’t China ever going to have 
enough Chinese converts to Christianize China? 

How does it happen that Chinaman, Japanese, Hindu or African, 
claiming to be a convert to Christ, never undertakes to do for his native 
land what Patrick did for Ireland, Columba for Scotland, and the Brit- 
ish disciples won by Augustin for England? 

WHY TST THAT PRACTICALLY EVERY ORIENTAL 
“QONVERT” WHO HAS MADE ANY EFFORT TO PROSE- 
LYTE HIS OWN PEOPLE HAS HAD TO BE PAID TO DO IT? 

This fact of itself is enough to prove to every unbiased mind that 
we are not Christianizing the Chinese and the Hindoos. We are sim- 
ply bribing them to act the hypocrite. Even their children, who are 
glad enough to get the education we give them, do not take our re- 
ligion. 

* * * * 7 * * * * + 

While writing this editorial a friend sent me a newspaper clipping 
which throws quite a cheerful light upon Miss Houston’s references to 
missionary hardships: 


“A $15,000 boat to be used in the missionary service on the Kongo River, Africa, 
will be built in this city. The contract has been awarded by the Foreign Christian 
Missionary Society, of Cincinnati, to James Rees & Sons Company. It is expected 
the craft will be completed in time to be placed on exhibition during the centennial 
celebration of the Disciples in this city next October. The boat will be named the 
Oregon, in honor of the Oregon State Missionary Society, which pledged to raise the 
money to pay for the boat after listening to Dr. Royal J. Dye, of the Kongo Mission, 
tell of his needs for the better prosecution of his work, He will be in complete charge 
of the boat, which will be the first craft built for such a purpose in the United 
States. The boat will be manned by a crew of ten persons and will have a capacity 
for one hundred passengers.” 


That sounds like “hardships”, doesn’t it? An elegant, up-to-date 
floating palace, for the missionaries who are out after those Congo Nig- 
gers. Oh! shades of Paul and Timothy and Augustin and Columba! 
They never knew the joys of the chase of the benighted heathen in 
fifteen-thousand-dollar houseboats. 


96] FOREIGN MISSIONS 


Fifteen thousand dollars for one missionary boat on the distant 
Congo, and the yearly expenditure of hundreds of dollars to operate 
it! Were the same amount of charitable donations invested in a float- 
ing hospital for sick children, and set afloat in Lake Michigan, or off 
New York, or on the Potomac, how many thousands of precious little 
lives might be saved—children who are perishing in crowded, stifling 
tenements of the large cities! 

Suppose the thousands of trained, heroic workers in the foreign 
fields were summoned home; suppose that the golden stream now flow- 
ing Eastward were devoted to the removal of the frightful conditions 
which, in our own land, are becoming worse every day,—would it not 
be a saner purpose, as holy a task, productive of infinitely greater re- 
sults in the uplift of the human race? 


Nothing > 


JUVENILE TEXTILE WORKERS ON STRIKE IN PHILADELPHIA 


The 65,000 American white girls who are being sold into bawdy- 
house slavery are of greater importance to the future of Christian civ- 
ilization than every negro on the face of the earth. The loss to our 
national future and to the world’s aggregate of intelligent manhood of 
the tens of thousands of white children who are filling the neglected 
garden of life with weeds instead of flowers, or who are physically and 
morally wrecked by child slavery,—are of more consequence to our 
hereafter than all the feet-bound maidens of China, all the child- 
widows of India, all the men, women and children of Africa. 

In the name of common sense, enlightened patriotism and whole- 
some Christianity, will we never so regard it? 


* %* % * * * * * * * 


He that provideth not for his own household is worse than an in- 
fidel. To that effect speaks Holy Writ. My contention is that in the 


FOREIGN MISSIONS [97] 


matter of furnishing food, clothing, books, medicine, secular education, 
industrial training, orphan’s homes, asylums and kindergartens, we 
owe our first duty to our own national household. 

The brotherhood of man does not make it your duty to feed some- 
body else’s children before you feed your own. 

First, maintain and educate the boys and girls that you caused to be 
brought into the world. First, you are responsible for them—not for 
the children that some other man begot. 

Have we not a national, as well as an individual household? So I 
contend. The people of the American Republic are as truly your na- 
tional household, as the inmates of your home constitute your indt- 
vidual household. That being indisputably so, why is it not good doc-, 
trine to say that inasmuch as the Bible tells us to provide for our indi- 
vidual households first, it is analogous that we should fully provide for 
our national household, before carrying anything but the Word of God 
to the heathen? Just as it is our natural duty to provide for our chil- 
dren before furnishing maintenance and support to the children of 
others, so it is our patriotic duty to carry relief to the needy of our 
own country before making foreigners the beneficiaries of our bounty. 


(The press dispatches announced the death of a, beautiful young lady, of Cin-, 
cinnati, Miss Elsie Gasser, whose physician attributed her failure to rally from an 
operation “to the pernicious effects of the evil custom” of tight lacing. 

~ Asked if it was true that one of the physicians was so struck with the injury 
that the girl was shown to have done herself by tight lacing that he contemplated a 
pamphlet against it, Dr. Strohback said: 

“What good would a pamphlet do? Girls just will be so interested in style that 
they will lace. No pamphlet will stop them.” 

Possibly a few of the Chinese girls who have been persuaded by American mis- 
sionaries to defy the fashion which demands small feet for Celestial ladies, might 
accomplish good results if they would come over and endeavor to work a change of 
American style in the matter of small, round waists, or “tube gowns”’.) 


WOMEN INSTRUCTORS WANTED BY CHINAMEN 
DENIED FEMALE TEACHERS, THE CHINKS ARE DESERTING CHRISTIANITY 


“PrrrsspuRG, September 30.—Chinamen in Pittsburg are deserting the Christian 
religion because the Second Presbyterian Church no longer permits a woman in- 
structor for each scholar in the big mission conducted by the church. Since the Elsie 
- Sigel murder in New York prominent members of the church have been urging that 
the tragedy should serve as a warning and that the school should have men in- 
structors. The church now has decided that this plan shall be enforced and the Chi- 
nese, highly indignant, are deserting the mission.” 

The above item of news went the rounds of the papers in October, 
1909. : 


Comment would but weaken the terrific force of the facts! 


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